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THE QUEST OF THE FACE 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

MBW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Uumo 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCIHTA 
MBLBOURNB 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TOXOHTO 




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MmnmrA mmg) fiA hcmi mm ew m ficijtopKtic.sii.) 

Fasneiso/. 
" He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for 
our iniquities : the chastisement of our peace tvas upon him; 
and with his stripes ice are healed." 



THE 

QUEST OF THE FACE 



BY 

STEPHEN GRAHAM 

AUTHOR OF "PRIEST OF THE IDEAL," "THE WAY 
OF MARTHA AND THE WAY OF MARY," ETC. 



l!3eto gotb 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1918 

All rights reserved 



■V- 



Copyright, 1918 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published, May, 1918 



©CLA499230 



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To the Most Heavenly and Beautiful 
of Women, 



PREFATORY NOTE 

"The Quest of the Face" was my last writing 
before entering the Army. The supplementary 
studies belong to varying times and places in my 
life and wanderings. The illustrations are mostly 
from Russian sources, and I hope that the sugges- 
tion of their power and beauty may remind some 
that though Russia seems to have fallen there is an 
imperishable Russia which cannot fall. 

"The Quest of the Face" was written with much 
earnestness and joyful expectation, and it is in part 
a record of actual life and seeking in the streets 
and among friends. To the many into whose 
hands the book will come I hope it may be an in- 
vitation to become builders of the City in which 
Dushan and I have been active spiritual masons. 

Stephen Graham. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I The Face of Christ 1 

II The Immortal 129 

III The Changeless God 159 

IV The Light 169 

V A Russian Beggar 201 

VI The Student 215 

VII The Shadow 231 

VIII Alice 253 

IX Mathilde 265 

X Serapion the Sindonite 273 

XI Simon on the Pillar 265 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

"He was wounded for our transgressions, he was 
bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of 
our peace was upon him; and with his stripes 
we are healed" Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

''What is Truth?'' 28 

Bad News from France 30 

Vassily and Ivan 36 

"Whom do men say that I am?" 46 

On the Shroud of Turin 60 



THE FACE OF CHRIST 



JFe are all seeking a face. It may be the dream face of the 
ideal, our own face as it ought to be, as we could wish it to be, 
or the face that we could love, or a face we once caught a glimpse 
of and then lost in the crowds and the cares. We seek a face of 
such celestial loveliness that it would be possible to fall down 
before it in the devotion of utter sacrifice. Some seek it desper- 
ately, others seek it ever hopefully, some forget and remember 
and then forget again and remember again. Others live their 
life in the consciousness of a promise that they shall see the face 
at some definite time by and by. The vision of it seems com- 
pletely remote from some, and they live their life hardly and 
darkly, but there are others who are perpetually in the light of it, 
and they see all the common sights of the world transfigured by it. 

Each has his separate vision of the face. And as there 
is an infinite number and diversity of mankind, so the faces of 
the ideal are infinitely numerous and diverse. Yet as in truth 
we are all one, so all these faces are one, and all the loveliness 
is one loveliness. 



THE QUEST OF THE FACE 



THE FACE OF CHRIST 

I SET out to look afresh at men's faces. My first 
impression is that all faces are paler than they 
were. Men are wearing tattered grave-clothes. 
Lazy faces, tired faces, worried faces, busy faces, 
self-satisfied faces, fat faces that droop, lean faces 
that peer, easy-going faces, hating faces — mostly 
hurrying, restless, accidental, tide-swept, tide- 
moved. On the sunny side of the great highway 
they are thronging; at a street comer they are 
wedged in a crowd looking up at the sky, in which 
it seems a balloon is floating. On the cold and 
shady side of the street they are sparse and anxious. 
I do not pass over but enjoy the Spring sunshine 
with the sunlit throng. They pass and they pass 
and are the same though diverse. 

Everywhere I discern the faces of the broken 
3 



4 THE QUEST OF THE FACE 1 

and the suffering, the faces of those needing heal- 
ing, needing to be made at one: nowhere do I see 
the face of a healer who could make whole. I 
see sometimes the faces of seekers, but I wait and 
do not find the face of a revealer. 

A blind man with red sunburnt face stares up- 
ward from empty eye-sockets, looks full-face at 
the sun and sees nought, though wet tears ooze 
from where his eyes should be. A tin can hangs 
from his neck, and across his wretched breast is 
written: Pity the poor blind! A lady, moved by 
the sight of him, comes forward and drops a penny 
into his tin can; it falls with a clank, and the blind 
man, still staring upward, thanks her with an un- 
earthly voice. She passes on forgetfully and uses 
her eyes to find Spring likenesses of colour in the 
adorned shop-windows. 

Suddenly in the approaching tide two new faces 
appear and on them a look of expectancy, a knowl- 
edge of coming pleasure. And I wonder what is 
the reason. But they enter a public-house. Anon 
the door opens again and they come out with a 
look of indulgence-satisfied and a dull curtain of 
disillusion. 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 5 

I walk westward where the shops are larger and 
the women are multiplied. Women's faces turn, 
glance, peer; refined faces, shallow faces, worldly- 
faces, vulgar faces, purse-conscious, dress-con- 
scious; shop-reflections, husband-reflections, neigh- 
bour-reflections. They stare till they see them- 
selves in the shop windows, picture themselves 
suddenly in other hats, other blouses, other habits, 
and still it is not so, they are not satisfied. No 
woman comes carrying a child in her arms. 

In shops like marble halls or palace apartments 
the women see themselves as they would like to be, 
see or search for their alter-egos in wax. Some 
wax egos say, "Don't I look nice?" Others say, 
"How do you like me in this blouse?" Others 
haughtily, "Am I not perfect?" — the paradise of 
dames. A foolish paradise, the women flutter 
past. The first blue-bottle buzzes against the 
bright panes. 

The pavement becomes crowded again and it is 
difficult to pass. It is in front of a picture shop. 
There are more men than women staring into the 
window, and there they see many studies of Eve 
in the glamour of her nakedness. They stare 



6 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

hungrily and restlessly. Their faces are hard, 
masked, curious; preoccupied faces, cruel faces, 
lascivious faces, comic faces, the faces of buffoons. 
In the midst of the window there is a face they see 
accidentally but do not mark, the miraculous por- 
trait; above it is written in red ink, 

Jesus Christus 
2/6 

and underneath is printed: "// you watch the 
eyes, which are shut, you will see them suddenly 
open." If you look upon Christ He will look 
upon you. But the sons of Adam are looking at 
the daughters of Eve. 

They do not look on the miraculous face and 
therefore it does not look upon them, the Christ 
remains blind. But if perchance one man looks, 
one man sees — then he gives eyes to the blind, the 
blind Christ, blind till then, and He opens His 
eyes and looks upon him. 

A haunting face, unusual, unnatural. I shall 
not find that likeness as I stray through the crowds 
of men, nothing like unto it. And yet everywhere 
and in every face there is something which is re- 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 7 

lated to it. As the faces pass by me in review I 
cannot help asking whose face shall I take for my 
new mystery play, which face of all those thou- 
sands has the most fittingness to be chosen for 
Christ. They have been wont to dress up any man 
for the part, to give him the conventional beard and 
chestnut hair, and put the words into his mouth. 
But mine when I find him will have more respon- 
sibility, for I need him not only to be the part but 
also to prompt me, the artist, as to just exactly who 
Christ is. So they go past me, these fractions of 
humanity, each all too small, each one lacking, 
lacking so much. I love them all, and it is a little 
sad to reflect that they take no pains, that each one 
would probably straighten himself and look a little 
better if he knew he were being looked at as a 
candidate and being seriously considered as an 
approximation to the face of Christ. But then at 
once he would cease to be authentic, his natural- 
ness would disappear and he would begin to act, 
and I need no one to act the part to me, I could 
act it very well to myself. When I see the true 
face it will speak to my heart; the faces that I see 
so far tell me naught except the sadness, the lone- 



8 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

liness, the emptiness, the mistakenness of every- 
day human life. Pass then, pass, pass on, pass by! 
On thee, on thee, on thee, brother, perchance I shall 
never look again. On thee, sister, my eyes have 
rested, and belike I shall never look on you more. 

Once more a crowd! This time outside a phre- 
nologist's window, in which is exhibited a plaster 
cast of a perfect cranium, and beside it scrolls 
which record phrenological valuations of the heads 
of Cabinet Ministers and Generals. Soldiers go 
in and out at the door of the shop, enter nervously 
and exit happily. The phrenologist marks you for 
each of the human qualities on a normal of five. 
If you exceed five marks you are in excess and need 
to exercise restraint, if less than five you are lack- 
ing and should cultivate. Thus each man is tabu- 
lated for faith, hope, and charity, fear, combative- 
ness, honesty, imagination, sense of time and place, 
humour and sublimity. 

"Do you ever get a perfect man with five for 
everything?" I ask. 

"No, never, nor do we ever get two exactly the 
same," the phrenologist replies. 

I sit in the room whilst various soldiers with ex- 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 9 

pressions of doubt, obstinacy, self -consciousness, 
vanity, and the like come in to have their qualities 
and defects stated. Some have combativeness in 
excess, some despite their khaki are pronounced 
low-spirited, some are too hopeful, others lacking 
in hope; none seems to have a faith that will re- 
move mountains, but most have an excessive sense 
of the humorous. No fives are given, but many 
sevens and threes. 

"Thousands of heads pass through my hands," 
I hear the expert saying. "But no perfect head 
ever turns up. I never hand out a complete series 
of fives. But if you take the charts of twenty or 
thirty ordinary human beings and add them up 
you'll find the average works out at about five." 

"So humanity on the whole is perfect!" 

I take out from my pocket a portrait of Christ 
which has no halo and offer it for examination. 

"A strong face, but most unbalanced," comes the 
phrenologist's reply. "Too slight a hold on life, 
charity too extreme, likely to be deceived by others. 
Sense of time and place good, but dangerous lack 
of combativeness. 9, 9, 2, 11, 8 — " 

"And the cranium in the window is perfect?" 



10 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

I ask. "Strange that it should remind me so of a 
bust of Julius Caesar." 

I pass out on to the great highway and thorough- 
fare once more, murmuring the thought that hu- 
manity in the mass is perfect, though individually 
it is lacking. The Christ, however, is unbalanced. 
It is the type of Caesar that has the perfect brow. 

In a restaurant all are eating or expecting food, 
or talking as they eat, a new world of faces, all 
abnormal, but less tired, less pallid, less interest- 
ing. No seeking on any face. A tall priest comes 
in, and before breaking bread solemnly makes the 
sign of the Cross. That is good, but he sits down 
to his food and straightway forgets the solemnity. 
At a large table a dozen or more are sitting and a 
large fish is served and a whole loaf is cut up, 
and the one fish and the one bread goes to make 
flesh in each of the twelve — the unity underlying 
our partaking of bread together. 

I am not of their party, but eat my lonely bread 
at a table in a far comer, and having eaten, give 
thanks, leaving no crumbs, and I stray once more 
into the city, on which night is coming down. I 
am soon in the midst of a crowd, and it is my lot 



I 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 11 

to walk against the tide, peering into faces, hoping 
and expecting. But in the lights of evening the 
faces are more abnormal, less natural. 

The streets have become darker, and human eyes 
have become brighter. The day of toil is over, 
and an expectation of happiness throbs in the air. 
Eyes turn from the darkness to the light, to the 
screened brilliancy of the windows of jewellers' 
shops and of costumiers' and the light of so-called 
palaces and halls. A more mysterious humanity 
is flocking together, and I go in with it at a door 
and find myself in a large and crowded theatre. 
The lights are down, and only the stage, where a 
beautiful girl is dancing, is lit. I see hundreds 
of pale featureless faces turned toward the beau- 
tiful girl, faces like leaves, sad, silent, pallid faces, 
hundreds of them, thousands as I surmise. And 
the beautiful dark girl in pink tights dances before 
them, makes them pleasure. She enchants them 
and promises happiness. Every slightest move- 
ment is watched, saved, preserved in leaves of 
memory like delicate rose-petals. She is taken to 
pieces like a beautiful rose, and kept. She be- 
comes the possession of all, as if many hundreds 



12 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

of men and women merged into one could have 
collectively one bride. And all accept in silence, 
as if each man in his stall were dead in his grave 
and powerlessly yearned toward life. Only one 
thing is clear, she has celestial power, she could 
make them live; at one expressed wish all would 
begin to stir, to whisper, to stretch out hands. And 
presently it is so — she ceases to dance, goes out 
from the lighted stage, comes back re-clothed, and 
coming forward to the centre holds up one hand 
and commences to sing. 

The spell of the dance continues, but with her 
song it slowly gives way to another spell, as from 
all parts of the theatre one hears a humming. She 
is comforting, soothing, promising, crooning, whis- 
pering through smiles and tears. She lays a gen- 
tle hand on each man's heart, she comes nearer and 
closer, and reconciles and beguiles, and presently 
out of all the vast audience from all parts, even 
from the most remote, voices begin to sing with 
her, to her. She holds up a delicate finger and all 
sing to her, to her bright eyes and dark hair and 
her miniature little figure swathed in light and silk. 
And I also begin to sing vaguely and move spirit- 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 13 

ually toward that one centre where the light-beams, 
streaming through our breath and smoke, converge. 
An intoxicating golden moment of unity and desire. 

Christ somewhere is hidden here. But though 
there are many faces I cannot see the features, can- 
not look into each individually. I am not visually 
aware of my fellow-man. But how strongly I am 
aware of him in another way, aware of him alto- 
gether. If this theatre were empty, if there were 
no audience but only the girl singing, I should not 
be moved, and the girl would be less beautiful. 
She is our unity as it were, our Psyche, dancing 
and singing before us, not each man's Psyche so 
much as the Psyche of all as one, of all who are 
thus moved. 

But she goes, and in her place jugglers appear, 
who quickly cause humanity to forget. And I do 
not stay, but, the spell being broken, flit outward 
to the long stone stairs and to the deserted open 
doorway. 

The street of the theatre is now devoid of people. 
It is as if all had been gathered in to make that 
great unity of yearning eyes and pallid faces. 
The lights are screened, and from the back the the- 



14 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

atre looks like some strange black box with the lid 
shut down. Yet within is a composite humanity, 
tier upon tier. 

To be by myself is lonely. I am wistful and 
heart-sick. The song which united me with all 
those throbbing humans now haunts my mind and 
plays itself over in my mind as it were with one 
finger, whereas but lately some marvellous orches- 
tra had rendered it. Yet it was but the gentle voice 
of a slight girl. 

All about me the shutters are down, as if living 
shops had drawn down vizors over their faces. 
There is the sense of being in some underground 
graveyard moving among vaults, and I hasten to 
find people once more, hasten home, because all 
seem to be in their homes except those I left in the 
great painted serrated theatre. Then, nearing 
home, a last group of peering mortals attracts my 
gaze to the gloom of a side street. An accident 
has occurred, and five or six men and women are 
staring at the ground and asking questions of one 
another. A stranger on the road has suddenly 
fallen down, has fainted or is perhaps dead. He 
lies full length. Some one is trying to lift him; 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 15 

how heavy he is! Some one has undone his collar 
and coat, but his pallid reposing face looks upward 
without animation. Gazing at him I completely 
lose the impression I had of the theatre. A strange 
face. The strangest I have seen to-day. As I 
stare at it questioningly I ask myself why it has 
not been my lot to see just such a face borne on 
the shoulders of the living— in the midst of the 
crowd. Of all faces that I have seen this one is 
likest to the miraculous portrait, and as I look at 
his closed eyes attentively it is as if they open 
quietly and look upon me. 

I bend over him to see him more clearly. For 
the murky light of the darkened lamps causes the 
white face with its dark beard and hair to look 
even more like a picture, like an old painting of 

Rembrandt. 

"Do you know him?" a voice asks. "No? 

You do not recognise him? He has no marks of 

identification, not even a letter or a tailor's name 

sewn to his cloak?" 

I take from my bosom the portrait of Christ 

without a halo and offer it to the man addressing 

me. 



16 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

"It is not the same," says the latter. "But it 
has a family likeness. Whose portrait is it? His 
brother's perhaps." 

Perhaps. It was given me when I was a child, 
but I have never met Him in the flesh. Yet I've 
always thought I might. A wonderful face. It 
has lain between the leaves of my Testament for 
twenty years and has grown pale there. They say 
He is alive. I long to find Him. He is to be 
found. But oh that I knew where! 

So we stand gazing upon the face of the dead 
and watch the heavy body laboriously lifted up by 
bearers. My mind goes back suddenly to the 
bright Psyche on the stage. How light was that 
Psyche, how heavy this corpse on the street! We 
watch the bearers grapple with it and bear it pon- 
derously away to the police station and then to the 
mortuary to be ranged with other bodies of anony- 
mous humanity. 

Though the body was taken away, the symbol 
and sense of death remained graven in my mind. 
In my wanderings among men during the day I 
had become intimate with but one individual and 
he was dead. True, I had become intimate with 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 17 

the nameless many, in the hurrying road-throng at 
noonday, in the theatre at night, strangely and 
marvellously intimate. But only with the dead 
man had I as an individual established common 
ground. And with human perversity I preferred 
to dream of the latter. I obliterated the larger 
impressions from my mind. Sadness and gloom 
filled the space of my loneliness and wrapped me 
about in the night hours. The thought that people 
are and then are not was my despair, that people 
have once been but are not now, are not even re- 
membered but lost. 

Toll the bell ! Toll the bell for the dead ! Pray 
for the poor dying men and women! Light the 
candles and weep for the dead, for the living who 
have entered the great darkness! For the living 
who are entering it in thousands whilst we think! 

Think of those whose bright faces were turned 
away from us ages ago, of those whom you have 
forgotten, whom every one in the world has for- 
gotten, whom no one of any coming age shall ere 
recall. They are lost in the vast outer limbo, 
which is so much greater than the narrow sphere 



18 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

of memory. That is our despair, the despair even 
of a Christ-seeker. We have all to enter it, not 
only the first twilight of memory but the outer 
darkness of complete oblivion wherein myriads are 
lost. 

There are nights which the days succeed. They 
begin with radiant sunset that promises a morrow. 
Day follows night, day follows night, day follows 
night, but at last comes a night that no day follows. 
The twilight is murky and without promise, and 
night comes on without stars, and lamps are lit and 
bum low, and are replenished with oil and burn 
again, and again burn low and flicker, and again 
are replenished and again bum out, and night goes 
on. It goes on till all the oil in the world is burnt, 
and on and on for ever, intense, silent, black, and 
breathless. 

We are lighting lamps for Solomon and Homer 
and Dante and Shakespeare, but they and all the 
rest recede. All our dead have entered the dark- 
ness, and when we write of them or call their faces 
back to memory we are lighting the lamps — we 
light them, succeeding generations light them, but 
at last a generation comes that has no oil. 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 19 

I mused in this way as I lay in bed in the op- 
pressive darkness of my room. And the face of 
the dead man whom I had seen remained pale and 
sad in my memory and yet vivid as if the moon 
were shining upon it. The face of one who was 
destined to oblivion, a face also near to that of 
Christ. 

Next morning my dear professor joined me at 
breakfast, and ruffling his hair with both hands, 
exclaimed in a distracted way: 

"What a morning, what a morning!" 

"Yes, it is a lovely morning," said I. 

"Oh, not that I mean, not that I mean," replied 
the professor with chagrin. "It is Marathon morn- 
ing, my dear fellow, the anniversary of Marathon, 
think of it!" 

And the sun streamed through the upper panes 
of the windows, lightening his silvery hair and my 
gaunt haggard cheeks. 

"Its memory shall never pass away," said the 
professor. 

We opened the Times, Its pages were replete 
with the casuahies of a great battle, a long list of 
the dead printed in small type. 



20 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

"But the memory of those who died at Marathon 
has gone," said I. 

"No, no," said the professor. "They are re- 
membered. Each of these names you see here has 
his home where for generations they will be proud 
of him. It is glorious, it is moving, my dear 
fellow, moving — " 

"We have not, alas, the Marathon casualty list 
that we might look it over," said I coldly. 

"But we have, we have," said the professor, and 
he flattened out the newspaper before me, and I 
smiled. 

A strange thought suffused my mind, and I sup- 
pose it came from the professor's faith — even those 
who died at Marathon are alive in Christ. 

I have no doubt it is true. For as in Adam all 
die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. By 
Christ, in some mysterious way, all who died even 
before He was born must be saved also. He is 
the link between the living and the dead, and look- 
ing on the dead man's face one is suddenly, as it 
were, aware of Him. The face of Christ can be 
descried from the gate of death. Even so. The 
Eastern mediaeval portrait such as I have seen on 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 21 

old ikons is a reflection from the face of the dead 
— brown, wizened, wrinkled and unearthly. That 
portrait is a saying Nay to this life in favour of 
some other life to which death is nearer. 

Pity for the forgotten dead and for those who 
now seem to lie in dissolution, and also terror, all 
incline us to raise up the effigy of the dead as 
Christ. They incline me also. 

Nevertheless I fervently believe that Christ is 
to be found in the faces of the living. Christ 
walks perdu among the flocking crowd, and I might 
find Him in a human face. His face lurks in the 
face of some one who has passed me. If the face 
which is a reflection of death be authentic I should 
be able to find that face in the human faces which 
go by. The quest cannot be vain: I can and will 
find the face that I seek. A dead man could not 
play in my mystery play, though he might prompt 
some words of the drama. The word is good, but 
I must also have the life. I look at men's faces 
afresh but I do not see death. I see mortality, 
foreknowledge of death, but not death itself. Sad 
faces, tired faces, jaded faces, the faces of the 
dying, of those condemned to death — but all have 



22 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

in them life. 'Tis true no one seems to be com- 
pletely and absolutely alive. It would take four 
or five of these pitiful fractional brother humans 
of the street to make up one face which should be 
wholly alive. Perhaps more. But no number 
would add up to death. It is impossible to see the 
dead man Christ standing in the background of a 
man, behind his eyes. And for that reason, though 
seemingly death is in proximity to Christ, I decide 
not to accept the guidance of the face of the dead 
man. Christ is no corpse tied to a living man's 
back. 

There is in men's features something unwonted, 
something unusual. The most ordinary face as 
well as the most striking and unusual gives a hint 
of something or some one other than himself. It 
is not a likeness to any one I know, but a likeness 
to some one I have not seen. Perhaps they have 
to develop the likeness more, or I have to develop 
the eyes that see more. But I have a feeling that 
the mystery is a large one. It draws me on, and 
it is because of it that I feel the face is to be found 
thus, and though I accept the help of so-called 



VH; 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 23 

portraits I do not accept the portraits as a substi- 
tute. The Living One is my only authenticity. 

The temptation comes to me to seek the likeness 
in those who seem more alive. In the windows of 
Paternoster Row I see pictures of the Western 
Christ, the typical and recognisable portrait of the 
West. His face in these is far removed from the 
image of death. There is a fairness in His face. 
He is the resurrected One, saying as it were, "Why 
seek ye the living among the dead?" He is a 
gracious living human being with a suggestion in 
His face and bearing of some mystical white horse. 
This picture is true for most of us in the West. 
For the West, being always more eager to be obvi- 
ous, identifies itself readily with the simple idea 
of life. 

And it is on the side of life that I seek for my 
type, not knowing, however, what exactly life is or 
what are its limitations, not even certain whether in 
life I include death also as a mere incident in liv- 
ing and greater living. Life presents itself first 
of all as strength. I look carefully at Burgess who 
swam the Channel, and Zbysco the wrestler, whom 
none could overthrow, at many sturdy soldiers, 



24 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

those especially from country places and overseas. 
Among these, however, is dulness and less inspira- 
tion. I then seek strength coupled with boldness 
and then associated with authority and tempered by 
mercy and I see the face on which is written, 
"Enough unto myself." I see confident, decisive, 
and resolute faces, the faces to which others look 
reliantly, the faces of those who take life into their 
own hands and make out of it something worth 
while. They are in contrast to the pitiful broken 
faces of average humanity. It is pleasure to look 
on them. And yet I do not love them so much, 
am not attracted to them, and feel as if somehow 
their life must be narrower. The strong man 
abides by himself. A paradox if in reality the 
strong man is narrower than the weak, has less 
possibility of divinity than the weak. A still 
greater paradox if the Divinity is to be sought in 
the weak. 

I suppose Napoleon and Alexander in their 
pitch of pride had a suggestion of immortality in 
their faces. They almost looked immortals, as if 
a new type had arrived on the earth and would not 
die, would not decay or wane or tend toward the 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 25 

grave. Yet even in their eyes was the monition: 
Remember that thou also must die. 

Yet they craved immortality, as we all do, and 
perhaps the strong desire and will were good evi- 
dence of capability. They (and we) are capable 
of being immortal. 

With this thought I dream as I walk and ask 
myself the questions, "What is it to be immortal? 
What would it be like to be immortal?" Then I 
see the type. If I partook of the magical elixir 
I should suddenly straighten myself out, and there 
would fall from me all manner of signs of weak- 
ness, not only from my face but from every part 
of my body and limbs and from my guise and bear- 
ing. I should not step as I do now, timidly and 
tentatively as if I were not altogether sure where 
my foot would come to earth, and even if I took 
small steps there would be something different 
about them. The sound of the footfall would be- 
come metallic. My speech would be changed. It 
would be forthright — a more absolute utterance. 
No whispers and lispings. The tones of ordinary 
human sadness would vanish. And the face, 
wherein the hieroglyphic of man's destiny is writ- 



26 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

ten, would be different, the old features erased and 
a new lettering of the eternal Sanscrit inscribed. 
My brow, broken with lines of mortality, would 
become like brass or marble, massive as that of 
the Sphinx. My eyes would become larger, and 
instead of being liquid and gentle would be hard 
and glittering like polished stones. Mortality 
would have gone from these orbs, I should not be 
lovable any more. But I should be strong. It 
seems I should be everything which man is not. 
Man is the weak, the unfulfilled, the mortal, 

He weaves and is clothed with derision, 
Sows and he shall not reap, 
His life is a watch and a vision 
Between a sleep and a sleep. 

For that reason we love one another, yearn toward 
one another. 

Still, as I said, many do crave the absolute na- 
ture of strength and are pleased when some one 
flatters them, saying, "Thou art an immortal." 
One man says, "I cannot look on a weak man with- 
out a certain feeling of repulsion." Perhaps that 
is because the weak man reminds him silently: 
You are not so strong as you pretend, you also 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 27 

must die at last, and have a portion in the grave 
and with the worms. Nevertheless this solecism of 
feeling strong, desiring to be strong, taking one's 
stand as strong, since it does exist, and is part of 
the natural history of humanity, cannot be thus 
dismissed. 

Where does the truth lie? With the weak or 
with the strong? That is a great question, and 
though I theorise and speculate whilst I seek, I 
cannot accept any answer which I may deduce 
merely as a deduction. My answer, I know, must 
come from the living face. 

There is a clever picture by the Russian painter 
Ge that states the question, puts it before my eyes ; 
it is called "What is Truth?" and it might have 
been called "Where does the Truth lie?" It is a 
representation of Pontius Pilate and Christ. Pon- 
tius Pilate is strong and full of life ; he is fat from 
good living, hard in his self-sufficiency, and he 
stands in the full light of prosperity. Christ, on 
the other hand, stands in deepest shadow. He is 
broken and enigmatical and sorrowing. He is 
weak, and when Pilate makes his imperious gesture 
and asks, "What is Truth?" Christ even seems con- 



28 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

fused and has not wherewith to reply. He is 
almost abashed. Pontius Pilate is strong and se- 
cure: Christ, however, is like a tramp or a broken- 
down fellow of the streets. He is an exaggeration 
of the weak. There is perhaps even guilt in His 
face. For to be ill-dressed and weak smacks a 
little of guilt in the presence of one who is strong 
and has authority. It can compromise a case. 
But where does the Truth lie; with which of these 
two? We would answer pat, knowing the answer 
from their respective names, but the average Chris- 
tian of to-day, not knowing one was Pilate and the 
other Christ, would be inclined to think the pros- 
perous man had the truth, was more to be relied 
upon. These fat men, they who sleep o' nights, 
are much preferred. 

However, if they were walking before me, this 
Pilate and Christ of the picture, I should not find 
my answer in either of them. I should, however, 
feel that the weaker face was nearer and that there 
was more of the ideal in the man who was nearer 
to death. 

Of this picture the most extreme hopes were en- 
tertained by Ge and his friend Tolstoy, and they 




WUAT IS TRUTH? 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 29 

thought it might change the whole point of view 
of Europe with regard to the significance of Christ 
— a whole Russian novel on a canvas. But there 
is something lacking in it, however. We feel that 
Christ, pitiful as He is, is not saving the sinful man 
in His presence, and Pontius Pilate, instead of be- 
ing in any way redeemed or made lovable, is shown 
as more odious, thrown into sharp contrast with the 
unfortunate one. Even the strong man, granted 
that he be human, seems to be in need of being 
saved. 

Another statement of the question whether hu- 
man truth is to be sought with the weak or with 
the strong might be made by the mere presentation 
of two portraits of absolute types, as for instance 
by placing Napoleon and Christ in contrast as in 
Verestchagin's picture.^ In the East this question 
is more debated than in the West. Napoleon is 
shown in Moscow. He has made his bed in the 
most holy place there, in the Cathedral of the As- 
sumption on Moscow's holy hill. He has chosen 
it, not because it is holy, but because it is conveni- 
ent. Napoleon is sitting in the midst of the majesty 

1 "Bad News from France," 



30 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

of the temple he does not understand. He is strong 
and mighty and well-clothed, and still prosperous 
though anxious. He has a suggestion of the look 
of an immortal, and at the same time lurking in 
his eyes the conditional destiny latent in the year 
1812. He holds in his hands a despatch. 

This picture might be called "Where does the 
Truth lie?" For Napoleon has his back to Christ. 
The fresco behind him shows the Master. It is 
marked by bullets and slashed by bayonets. Sol- 
diers have peeled parts away. The portrait of 
Christ is fading in the emphatic presence of Na- 
poleon. But where does the Truth lie? History 
has given the answer, as she will no doubt give it 
again. But lest we should miss it the painter has 
given us an extra suggestion for guidance. For 
whilst in Napoleon's hand is urgent news, in 
Christ's is the open Bible; in Napoleon's hands the 
telegram, so to speak, in Christ's the Eternal Word. 
We are reading the Gospel, and a telegram or the 
latest paper comes. We drop the holy Book and 
read the news. And then we return to the Gospel 
again. 

Napoleon is history's strongest man. As the 



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I THE FACE OF CHRIST 31 

lion is a king of beasts, so he stands to us as a 
king of men. And in seeking the strong man as 
opposed to the weak or in contrast to the weak we 
seek him. He is the next term of the Darwinian 
theory. As the ape is to man, so is man to Na- 
poleon. That is how it has been stated. And in 
any case Napoleon stands as a portent on the road 
of humanity. He is the pet pattern of man ; iden- 
tity with him is frequently the fixed idea of the 
lunatic. Many men are preoccupied with ideas 
concerning him, and the literature about him is in 
thousands of volumes. In the more vulgar domain 
of commerce we have Napoleons of finance. Na- 
poleons of the press, but even in the purified air 
of philosophy we find the noble and unhappy 
Nietzsche obsessed by the fineness of being a Na- 
poleon. He looks with disgust at the faces of 
contemporary humanity and reacts violently in 
favour of the strong man, the man who is not weak. 
"What is it that just I find intolerable, that which 
alone I cannot away with," asks he, "which makes 
me suffocate and pine? Bad air! Bad air! 
That something ill-constituted comes near me; that 
I must endure the smell of an abortive soul! . . . 



32 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

From time to time permit me one glance upon some- 
thing perfect, something completely finished, some- 
thing happy, mighty, triumphant, in which there is 
still something to be feared! Upon a man that 
justifies man; upon a complementary, lucky, and 
redeeming case of man, vindicating our faith in 
man! The levelling of European man hides our 
greatest danger. We see to-day nothing which will 
grow larger; we divine that all goes still down- 
ward ... to the more Chinese, the more Chris- 



tian." 



And the German philosopher obtains relief from 
the spectacle of broken and fractional humanity by 
gazing on his favourite figure, the one who nearer 
than any other was whole. Napoleon. At the 
French Revolution, as he says, there appeared "the 
antique ideal," and against the battle-cry of the 
right of the most, though not against the love-cry 
of the right of all, "there resounded the rapturous 
counter-cry of the privilege of the fewest. Like 
some last hint pointing to another road appeared 
Napoleon, the most isolated of men that ever 
was. . . ." 

In such words does the philosopher, out of pa- 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 33 

tience with humanity, ask you and me to seek the 
Superman, to look into the faces of passing men 
for the Napoleon. He constructs on his surmise a 
philosophy of individualism. 

And I ask the question: Is the face I seek the 
face of the Superman? No? Then is it the face 
of the under-man? 

It seems no face could be His unless there were 
the possibility that all others could hail and ac- 
knowledge it as the face. The strong face does not 
gain much assent. Christ said, "I am the Vine; 
ye are the branches," But we cannot imagine Na- 
poleon as the Vine and ourselves as the branches. 
There is a characteristic story which shows what 
sort of man the people naturally pick out as holy. 
Ivan the Terrible built a cathedral in Moscow, one 
of the architectural wonders of Europe, St. Vassily 
Blazhenny. He was a terrible monarch, a great 
Russian Caesar. Many a man he sent to the stake, 
and the square where the cathedral stands is called 
the Red Square because of the blood which was 
shed there. The cathedral is not, however, asso- 
ciated to-day with Ivan, but with a poor wretched 
cripple who sat in the Red Square all the time the 



34 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

cathedral was a-building, and reviled the monarch. 
This cripple was called Vassily the Silly or the 
Blessed (Vassily corresponds to William in our 
language). The Tsar did not lay hands on the 
cripple because the people held him to be holy, 
the Tsar himself may even have felt that he was 
holy. But the question is again: Where does the 
Truth lie, with Caesar or with Silly Willy? The 
word blazhenny means both blessed and silly, just 
as our word silly was once selig, and it was possi- 
ble to speak of the Silly Babe. Silly and Christ- 
like once had something in common. Be it re- 
membered in passing that the novelist Dostoievsky, 
endeavouring to show a type in our every-day life 
approaching to Christ in character, produced the 
Idiot, Prince Mishkin. If each portrait of Christ 
be an answer to the question, "Whom do men say 
that I am?" Dostoievsky answers with the picture 
of Mishkin the Idiot! 

I cannot help contemplating two conceptions: 
Christ as the fool, and then civilisation as "fool- 
proof," as a brutal modem phrase expresses the 
idea. Both are alarming: Christ as fool, and civi- 
lisation as fool-proof. But as I walk through the 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 35 

street I think of Carlyle's shocking phrase, "mostly 
fools," and it breaks in upon my mind with an 
unexpected, unintended charm. "Mostly fools"— 
what if in reality that might mean mostly images 
of Christ? 

But Carlyle did not mean that. He spoke out 
of his irritation at the common run of humanity, 
because the average man had not his intellect nor 
type of spiritual struggle, and could not share his 
thought or add a word of poetry to his. It was 
spasmodic misanthropy, and of the same kind 
as Nietzsche's phrase expressed — "the-much-too- 
many." 

I see a new type come through the crowd. He 
jostles his neighbour contemptuously, on his face 
is enmity and impatience. Every man and all are 
in his way. They hinder him. He spits to one 
side as he gets free, and shakes himself in his 
clothes, as it were to get free of an infection. He 
looks as though he would prefer a desert to any 
populace. He is the misanthrope. His attitude, 
though it may be little more than a pathetic human 
pose, makes for disruption and death. It is a dis- 
cord and it mars the unity of love. Carlyle, how- 



36 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

ever, did not hate his fellow-men. Looking at 
them at a certain moment and in a certain mood 
he found them somewhat contemptible. The best 
they could do was to find some hero whom they 
could humbly obey and then yield up their personal 
intelligence and follow him. He did not see a 
potential hero in every fellow-man, the chance man. 
Nor do I perhaps. 

If a man be misanthropic or an egoist he "abid- 
eth alone" ; he becomes segregated from the crowd. 
But if he love humanity he sinks himself in the 
crowd, rejoices to be of the many. The emblems 
of the two types are — Christ on the Cross, and Na- 
poleon on St. Helena; Christ is crucified between 
two thieves in the midst of humanity, a miserable 
human on His right and a miserable human on His 
left; but Napoleon makes his end in segregation 
from humanity, on the island. He is godlike but 
less than a god, human yet more than human — the 
ego intensified and affirmed, whereas Christ is the 
ego laid down. 

I see the fools in the passing crowd. I do not 
often see a Napoleonic type. Napoleon, however, 
professed to see in each common soldier the possi- 




VASSILY 
(In this composite picture 



AND IVAN. 

Holy Willy,' 



he was called. 



and Ivan the Terrible are brought in contrast.) 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 37 

bility of becoming a Napoleon, and it might be 
another man's quest to seek Napoleons in people's 
faces. At a parting of the ways I might say to a 
friend who had accompanied me so far, "You seek 
Napoleons: I seek Christs." 

An important question, however, is: What sort 
of a place is it in which we are seeking these differ- 
ing great types? As two friends might agree to 
part, one seeking tigers, the other lambs — a great 
deal depends on the place in which they seek. Is 
man's face a likely place? Is the animal or the 
God to be found there? Is the animal normal or 
is the human face of to-day a place where the ani- 
mal is seen to be outlived? My feeling is that the 
truly characteristic and new type of face of to-day 
is one in which love is an insoluble factor. 

Rubeck the sculptor, in his misanthropic period, 
sought as a key to the personality of those who 
came to him the animal base.^ In each accidental 
ordinary face which he saw there was something 
equivocal, and accordingly the busts which he did 
of them were equivocal also. On the surface they 
were "striking likenesses," as people called them, 

1 When we dead awaken. 



38 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

staring at them in astonishment; but at bottom they 
were, as he said, "pompous horse faces; self-opin- 
ionated donkey-muzzles; lop-eared, low-browed 
dog-skulls and fatted swine-snouts, or sometimes 
dull brutal bull-fronts." With less malevolence 
the sculptor Rubeck might perhaps have found 
tiger nature also, especially in women, and bird- 
consciousness, reptilian earth consciousness, and 
the like. It is true there is something equivocal in 
men's faces. There has been for a long time. It 
is possible to find all these animals in the faces of 
the passing crowd. It is also possible to see 
gleams of a celestial substance which is not animal. 
In that sense the faces are equivocal. 

And if there are animal faces in the faces of 
men, it is also true that there are reflections of 
human beings in animals. Dogs especially reflect 
their master's personality, and cows the character 
of their milk-maids. A cock in France is diff'erent 
from a cock in England. The bear upon occasion 
walks like a man, and the bull-dog has the mannish 
aspect of John Bull. The horses of the Kirghiz, 
so legend says, sometimes change into men, and 
men conversely into horses, so near they are akin. 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 39 

On Christmas Eve the Serbs carry cakes to the 
oxen, for they also participated in the birth of 
Christ and will ultimately be saved. A wolf 
suckled the founders of Rome itself. But all these 
manifestations are wonderful, inasmuch as they 
show the human on the basis of the animal. 
Mowgli is a marvellous stranger among the ani- 
mals, and though civilisation is like the scampering 
of the Bandar log the man-child cannot find his 
home among the animals but yearns away from the 
jungle. So men yearn away from the animal in 
themselves. And because of that also their faces 
are equivocal. Therein lies the wonder of the 
ordinary face, and any artist who would be true 
and do noble work must paint the looking-away- 
from which is in every face. And if besides that 
he can show also that which he is looking-onward-to 
it will be perfect painting. 

The faces in the crowd are to me an enigma. 
They are all veiled or else my eyes have films. 
This looking-away-from and looking-onward is 
written in each face, even in the most jaded, but 
I cannot fathom the mystery of it, cannot write the 
origin and destination it betokens. What is hid- 



40 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

den thus is not a simple or mechanical mystery such 
as a riddle, but a Divine one such as of the nature 
of God. The solution does not come as a precise 
mathematical result, but the sense is wafted to and 
fro, comes and goes, now making my soul ache, but 
anon leaving me with the thought that there is no 
mystery whatever. One thing is certain — when I 
am moved by any one face, it gets larger vividly, 
I see a canvas of humanity, and all manner of faces 
seem to press into the picture into the one face that 
I see. And I obtain a vivid sense of humanity as 
a whole looking-away-from and at the same time 
looking'Onward-to . 

Individual man, however, is the artist. He 
draws the face of Christ, the ideal likeness, in his 
own striving, and in the midst of the muddle of 
his existence. In his features are lines of the por- 
trait. He works in the book of life which the 
angel keeps, wherein every page is illuminated and 
emblematical. Each man's life when it has been 
lived and written in the book may be seen as an 
individual attempt to paint the portrait of Christ. 
Forgiveness, so necessary to all, is the erasure of 
the lines which do not count. 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 41 

A priest, discussing the merits of an exhibition 
of portraits of Christ, remarked that each portrait 
was a personal answer to the question, "Whom do 
men say that I am?" I take that to be a valuable 
criterion for art and life. Technique does not 
seem to have the importance asked for it — we are 
ourselves many of us ill-fashioned, asking often in 
the phrase of Omar, "What! did the hand then of 
the potter shake?" Historical accuracy, histo- 
ricity as it is called, is vain. But "Whom do ye 
say that I am?" is a vital and eternal standard. 
As there seems to be no answer for ever to the 
Sphinx question, "What is man?" so there seems 
to be infinite answer all the time to the Christ ques- 
tion, "Who is Christ?" 

A collector of portraits has named his collection 
"The Cloud of Witnesses." I wonder if his 
thought could be extended with reference to the 
context of that phrase, "Seeing we are compassed 
about with so great a cloud of witnesses ... let 
us run with patience the race that is set before us, 
looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our 
faith." ^ Reading that scripture the mind's eye 

1 Hebrews xii. 



42 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

sees all the faces that ever were created watching 
us being perfected and finished in Christ, because 
without us they also cannot be perfect. It is also 
the thought of my dear professor — even those who 
died at Marathon are waiting our perfection. 

Each portrait of Christ is an answer to the ques- 
tion, "Whom do men say that I am?" and there- 
fore the collection of portraits, though possessing 
a similarity, like the series of family photographs 
nailed to the cottage wall, have also a multifarious 
diversity. And the diversity of the portraits is not 
unlike the diversity of the faces passing on the 
street. 

As we look at the faces now we feel that some 
are alive, some dead. Those seem most alive 
which are nearest to our own conception of what 
the Face should be. But I suppose none, not even 
the most formal and conventional, is really dead, 
but like the barren staff is capable of flowering 
again. We need to see each portrait in its true 
place — in the time when it was produced and 
among the people for whom it was painted. If we 
would know the complete answer which the Italians 
have given to the Christ question we need to review 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 43 

all Italian portraits of Christ from the first till now. 
If we wish to know the answer given by the Spanish 
or Dutch or Germans or Russians we must think of 
the cloud of witnesses each nation has afforded. 
The one picture which we look at is as much part 
of an infinite series as is the face of the chance 
passer-by. 

In Russia's portraits of Christ a great harmony 
is discernible. The early pictures need the later 
ones, and the later pictures need the early ones. 
Ushakof's portrait of Christ painted in 1661 needs 
Vasnetsof's painted in 1905 to make it perfect, and 
Vasnetsof's portrait cannot quite stand by itself. 
It is arresting ; it has modernity written in it. But 
the very word modernity has an uncharitable after- 
thought or aftertaste, as if it were unpleasantly for- 
getful of the past. When we see the two pictures 
together we have the Christ in whom the dead are 
raised up equally with the living. Ushakof and 
Poznansky and myriads of others asleep in the old 
earth of the centuries await the faces of succeeding 
generations to complete their portrait, they need 
Nesterof and Vasnetsof and Ge and the many paint- 
ers of to-day, they need and we need those who yet 



44 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

shall come. As clearly as Vasnetsof is seen per- 
fecting and finishing Ushakof, shall they be seen 
perfecting the face which we show now. And if 
I look at many faces of different epochs and at 
the same time dream of faces to be, the concep- 
tions seem to blend and magnify one another, and 
I visualise spiritually the collective Russian 
Christ. 

And even now that vision is partial, fractional. 
It needs also the collective French Christ, the col- 
lective German Christ, the collective Christ of the 
small but not less mighty nations, the Christ also 
of nations not yet born a second time, the Christ 
of China, India, Japan. As the phrenologist said, 
"All individuals are lacking; only humanity in the 
mass is perfect," so I suppose all individual por- 
traits of Christ are lacking also, it needs all hu- 
manity to be one in the portrait of Christ before 
perfection is reached. 

The English answer touches us most since we 
are English, for as a nation we have to prepare our 
full and complete answer for the day when all the 
nations of the world will give each in his own 
language witness to the heavenly King. 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 45 

Wandering through the crowd I came to-day 
upon a theologian who explained to me at length 
tliat I was wrong. Christ was independent of mis- 
erable humanity. He was a God far away in the 
splendid heavens. True, He had walked here once 
incognito as a man, and purblind humanity had 
attempted to destroy Him. But being a God He 
conquered death and returned to His throne afar. 
He was no longer here: He was risen. One day 
would come a reckoning, and those who had lived 
righteously would be given a reward of bliss, and 
those who had lived unrighteously would be thrust 
down into everlasting fire. Christ had no portion 
now in our miserable life. 

But if Christ be not part of us how can we be 
one with Him? My hand or my child is subject 
to me because it is flesh of my flesh. And it is in 
the same way that we are subject to God — because 
we are part of Him. 

I suppose the theologian's conception of Christ 
was, however, his answer to the question, "Whom 
do ye say that I am?" and made up part of the 
whole series of answers, loth though I may be to 
find a common ground with him» 



46 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

Another answer is that which Holman Hunt gave 
in his picture "The Shadow of the Cross." Christ 
is standing in the carpenter's shop, and His shadow 
as it falls makes a cross. The floor is covered with 
lovingly-painted curling shavings of wood, and 
even waste-ends are seen to be beautiful in the 
presence of Christ. Through the clear window we 
see the Holy Land, recognise it at once if we have 
ever been there. No detail in the picture is too 
small for the loving and creating hand of the 
painter. That perhaps was the meaning of the 
character of pre-Raphaelite painting — no small or 
mean or miserable thing was really mean or negli- 
gible, but had a true value and loveliness in the 
presence of the Master. In many of the pictures 
of Holman Hunt and Millais and Madox-Brown 
and Bume-Jones there is an invisible Christ — in 
the presence of whom everything in the scene has 
its own particular loveliness. They painted Christ 
in ordinary life and brought Him from an inacces- 
sible heaven into the life of the every-day. They 
saw Him there, found His presence there. And 
that inspired them with a love of all the eyes saw 
— because such things had been made holy by 




"WHOM DO MEN SAY THAT I AM? 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 47 

Christ seeing them — were made holy now by the 
presence of the invisible Christ. 

How differently men have answered: — Carlyle 
with his history of Cromwell; Dostoievsky with 
Myshkin; Gorky in the Fellow-traveller; Oscar 
Wilde in De Profundis; Walt Whitman in Salut 
au monde; Solovyof in his vision of Divine Hu- 
manity; Tolstoy in his simplification of the Gos- 
pels, in his desire to found a religion of Jesus 
without miracles; Goethe in his Thought that if 
Christ had not lived it would now be necessary for 
some one to become Christ; Kant by his moral im- 
peratives; Nietzsche in his denial of the exclusive- 
ness of the moral. Strange that the artistic Friend 
of sinners of Wilde's De Profundis is the same as 
He who in the Brothers Karamazof kissed the 
aged Grand Inquisitor on the lips, the same as the 
Cromwellian Christ, the Happy Warrior of Words- 
worth and the Supreme but central and mystical 
figure of Solovyof! 

As strange and as simple as that all mankind, 
differing so widely and so much more hostilely 
than these, is in reality a unity, a brotherhood! 
Our own divinity could only be perfectly met by 



48 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

a Christ who had diversity in the same degree. 
Each typical sufferer needs a different vision. 
When the question is asked: Who is Christ? the 
blind man answers: it is he who gives sight to the 
blind. The mute man: it is he who opens the lips 
of the dumb. The cripple: it is he who makes me 
whole. The sick: it is he who shows me where my 
health lies. The condemned: he who says, 
"Neither do I condemn thee." The hard: it is he 
who melts and fuses the material shell. One an- 
swers: it is he who gives hope in the hour of great 
sorrow. Another: it is he who saves me in the 
moment of temptation. He who needs spiritual 
leadership claims that he is above all, the Captain 
of his soul. All these and myriads besides. And 
yet there are not many almighties but one Almighty. 
Every man's ideal is his abstract Christ — ^his 

All I could never be, 
All men ignored in me. 



That ideal is the picture we draw in life. Not 
all paint with the brush, some paint in the word, 
but all at least paint with life. Some answer on 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 49 

canvas, some on the printed page, others in marble ; 
but all in life. 

Yet not one of the men and women whom I see 
wears the ideal face, though, as I suppose, even 
the dullest possesses it, masks it. They all see nat- 
urally gleams of sometliing more beautiful than 
themselves and yearn toward it. There is one face 
and then a second face hanging in front of it or 
behind it. There is always a suggestion of unseen 
features behind the visible ones, and I am reminded 
of women I have seen in the East wearing such 
thin veils over their faces that shadowy features 
suggesting sometimes an unearthly beauty were 
seen through them. Such were the faces of the 
men and women in the crowd, shadowy, with other 
more beautiful features vaguely showing through. 

I take one out of the crowd at random and let 
him be Christ to me, try him for Christ's part in my 
mystery play. 

He is an ordinary man, vigorous, ambitious, hail- 
fellow-well-met, fond of a joke and a drink, not 
mean, not particularly generous, not suspicious; on 
the other hand, not particularly trustful of a 



50 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

stranger. He has a wife and children for whom he 
cares more than for the rest of humanity, and he 
has two brothers, one of whom he loves, the other 
he dislikes. He has a business handed on from his 
father, now retired. In politics he is Liberal; he 
does not go to church, though his wife goes and 
prays for him. He reads the newspapers. 

In looking on him I have the thought, "I have 
chosen you," and this fact begets a certain stillness 
in the breast, a hush, a sense of the marvellous. 
"In you, my friend, lives the Son of Man." Not 
that I tell him. Instinct saves me from letting him 
know my purpose in direct language. I enter into 
his life, he into mine, and I prepare a manuscript 
to take down the words of Christ for my play as 
he shall speak them. 

I feel a great tenderness and gentleness towards 
him. I forgive him and make allowances for all in 
him that is not Christ, for the animal in him, the 
earth in him, the parrot in him, the jackdaw in him, 
the human, all-too-human in him. For whole days 
this man is a frog; for days he is a worm, he is an 
ape, an elephant, a small dog. Even in the midst 
of his ordinariness there shows occasionally some- 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 51 

thing of the pre-historic, — though there never 
leaves his eyes the gleam of something beyond this 
time, the post-historic. The more I know him 
the more curious do I find his natural history, the 
way he behaves from day to day. "Cheery old 
Saunders," his friends say of him, "he's always the 
same." But he is never the same. In his quiet 
way he is always trying a new role. He imitates 
in a vague way the King, the Prime Minister, John 
Bull, the American dancer, his chance acquaint- 
ance, the average man ; or he strives to look what a 
good Liberal ought to be, or wears a style of clothes 
to suggest wealth. I never, however, see him pre- 
tending to be Christ, or imitating the Master, and 
that is somewhat disconcerting to a seeker. On the 
other hand, I see behind his features certain other 
ideal features. It is curious that often as he looks 
at himself in the glass, endeavouring to see that he 
looks well, or to find resemblance between his fea- 
tures and those of other men, he does not once 
descry the shadowy but sweet and beautiful coun- 
tenance lurking behind his. 

He knows not Christ. My manuscript remains 
untouched save for a few beginnings and a few 



52 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

corrections. This ordinary man seems to be too 
busy, too matter-of-fact, to lay hold of the poetry of 
life and be that. As a portrait of Christ I am 
afraid he is a failure. Which means once more 
that I myself have failed. 

I try another man. He is a sad-eyed wan-faced 
being, pacing to and fro on a bridge over a river. 
He has a look of tragic poetry in his visage, has 
been a poet once, perhaps, but the poetry has left 
him, and he is now trying to decide whether 'twere 
better to endure the ills he has or fly to others that 
we know not of. And when I tell him I have chosen 
him he gives no smiling answer back but remains 
still in his gloom. 

"Life does not mean much to you?" I ask. 

"Then perchance you are just the one who can be 
Christ to me," I proceed. "He who would lose his 
life shall save it." 

"No, I am a failure," says he. "I have come 
to the end." 

"Are you a believer in Christ?" 

"Believer! Friend, I am a lover, and I love 
Him so much that I will shortly join Him, go to 
Him, and be one with Him — 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 53 

For all we gain, 
Until we come to Him is vain." 

I try to persuade him to think better of life, but 
he laughs hollowly at my words. 

"What is it?" I ask soothingly. "Is it pain that 
gives you a distaste for life?" 

"It is life itself, this wretched partial existence, 
that disgusts me. It is loneliness and life-weari- 
ness." 

"But our life is part of the universal eternal 
life," say I. "A very small part, but still a part, 
an actual fraction of eternity." 

"Oh, no," says he. "A libel on eternity. Eter- 
nity is always going on, but our life is not on eter- 
nity's plane; it is a wretched conditional existence. 
I have had ideals, but I could never even begin to 
realise them here. Only with Christ can I make a 
beginning. I have tried for thirty years to write 
Alpha, and I believe you seriously fear that I am 
about to write Omega. Only after I have plunged 
into the river shall I write my true Alpha — 

And say to Him, What shall I be? 
Master, smite, but make me free, 
Perchance in these far worlds to be 
The better thing I sought to be. 



54 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

I am a failure, humanity is a failure. What can 
I do? What can they do?" 

And he continues crooning a melancholy poem 
to which there is no answer. Alone there courses 
through my soul the thought, "In what sad plight I 
find my figure of Christ. He needs my help. Yet 
I cannot help him." I feel that Christ is in him, 
and yet clearly this man does not speak or act like 
a Christ. He is a little mad. If Christ had gone 
mad. He might have spoken somewhat as this sui- 
cide speaks. 

I pull him towards the gloom of the lower parts 
of the city and he croons as he goes — 

"Upon thy couch lie down 
And fold the hands which have not sown, 
And as thou liest there alone, 
Perhaps some breath of seraph blown 
As soft as dew upon the rose 
Will fall upon thee at life's close, 
And thou wilt say, At last! At last! 
All pain is love, when pain is past. 
Then to the Master once again — 
Oh, keep my heart too weak to pray; 
I ask no longer questions vain 
Of life and love, of loss and gain, , 

These for the living are and strong — 
I go to Thee, to Thee belong." ^ 

1 R. James. 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 55 

And with that I let him go back. I feel he knows 
his own need better than I do mine. As a portrait 
of Christ he is a failure, however, and once more 
I fail. 

I choose then another. This time a lover and 
a poet. He is a plain man made handsome by his 
passion, an inarticulate one made vocal by love. 
He gladly gives me his confidence. He cares in- 
finitely for another, and would be ready to die or 
be annihilated for her sake. "I was an egoist till 
I fell in love," says he; "I cared for nothing but 
my own personal rights and interests. I confess I 
was a selfish person. But now I would lay down 
everything for another. It is strange, but I am 
ready to be swallowed up and forgotten and utterly 
lost in the personality of my beloved." 

I find this to be suggestive of Christ in man — 
this readiness to sink self in another's life and in- 
dividuality. The lover prompts some words of the 
drama. But he marries, begets children, and anon 
is egoist as before. As a portrait of Christ he 
showed gleams of the miracle. But as I see him 
now he is, alas, a failure. And I fail. 

A' her man at random in the fast-flowing crowd. 



56 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

He is a politician, and ready to stake life and money 
and happiness for a principle or a political ideal. 
He is full of noble wrath at the spectacle of tyranny. 
He votes conscientiously at all elections, and can- 
vasses all stupid neighbours to give up their own 
opinions and vote as he does. In the name of his 
ideal he occasionally refuses to pay taxes to Caesar. 
He is a substantial man of conscience. He prays 
and believes. He is a follower of Jesus. Jesus 
is his invisible, political captain, and he serves un- 
der Him against money-changers and sellers of the 
Spirit, would-be stoners of the unfortunate, against 
Pharisees, priests, and scribes, Caesars, Pilates, 
Herods. He lives strenuously, his lamp is lit, his 
loins are girded; he makes out of life a big thing 
and stakes high. 

I meet also a reactionary who sees the seamy side 
of the Liberal's life, the dreary industrial back- 
ground of his vision. He understands something 
the politician does not — that man is independent of 
material progress, does not need it. He sees the 
true beauty of individual man in his ability to rise 
superior to all material things. But he and all the 
rest seem failures as portraits of Christ. It is the 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 57 

same with other nationalities also. I take a Rus- 
sian, a German, a Frenchman, an American, and 
many others; but I cannot accept a Russian Christ 
as enough for me, nor a German Christ, nor a 
French, nor an American. All the portraits have 
truth in them, but they are not complete, not satis- 
fying. 

Curious that in Art it is as in life. Portraits 
of Christ are all more or less failures. The painter 
may have felt that he expressed what he meant but 
others are not satisfied. It may be his Christ, it is 
not ours. It seems to have been always impossi- 
ble to paint truly the face of Christ. Hence, I sup- 
pose, the miraculous likeness, such as that on the 
shroud of Turin and the other on the handkerchief 
of Saint Veronica. And these are miserable, bit- 
ter. Judaic faces — not New Testament faces at all. 
The idea of the painters has been to make some- 
thing which could pass as historical, authentic, a 
dead record. All that lives changes, so they 
wished to show definitely what Christ was. Prob- 
ably a lower type of mind was at work when these 
pious representations were painted. Not that there 
is not a certain wistfulness and beautiful pathos in 



58 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

these shroud-pictures and towel-prints. The wan 
faces of tens of millions of human beings have 
looked on them, tried to look into them, and these 
have given life, just as certain stone and wooden 
idols are said to have wrought miracles because of 
the faith of the worshippers — a theory which, how- 
ever, many reject, for wood and stone cannot in- 
spire the faith that removes mountains. Neverthe- 
less, even a dead idol which has been worshipped 
by one human being has an atmosphere of human 
pathos which all but hallows it, and those "authen- 
tic" portraits have that pathos also. There is an 
infinite positive significance in the seeking eyes that 
look at the portraits and ask, "Art thou He? Art 
thou He, or do we look for another?" Thus it is 
beautiful legends arise round about objects which 
in themselves may be base. They do not take their 
rise from the fraud or the error, but from the living 
spirit of humanity seeking ever the truth of its own 
destiny. In the East, so far from keeping to the 
historical ikon faces, the variously miraculously de- 
livered portraits, as if these were fact and all else 
must be fancy, painters take as their supreme task 
the painting of that type of portrait of Christ which 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 59 

they call "Not-by-hands-created." It is the sort 
of paradox one does not often find in our straight- 
forward culture, the man painting with his hands, 
using all the skill of his fingers to paint a picture 
which he entitles the "Portrait not made by hands." 
It is the painter's claim of inspiration. He works 
in the medium of prayer; and without inspiration 
from God he cannot hope to portray Christ. He 
puts forth his arm and the Spirit teaches his hands. 
It is also a tacit confession that without miracle the 
face of Christ cannot be expressed, and it implies 
as tacitly that the Face when seen will be a miracu- 
lous one, a mystical one — that is, one which each 
human being can see according to his own light and 
love according to his own need. The likeness of 
the shroud of Turin is par excellence the portrait- 
made-by-hands, the would-be authentic; the other, 
the inspired and mystical picture, is the "Not-by- 
hands-created." 

Yet this lively conception derives from the dead 
towel-portrait idea. And it does so because of a 
legendary explanation of miraculous portraits. It 
is said that a painter came to Jesus whilst He was 
in the midst of the crowd and endeavoured to por- 



60 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

tray Him, but failed because of the infinite way the 
expression of the face changed. It reflected con- 
stantly the faces of those in the crowd who had 
need of Him, and was not one face so much as five 
thousand in one. Jesus therefore took a towel and 
pressed it to His face saying, "The portrait of 
Christ may not be drawn by hands lest at any time 
it should be said this and this only was Christ." 
And He gave to the painter the miraculous likeness 
imprinted on the towel, and then the further bless- 
ing, "Thou couldst not paint My face for the reflec- 
tion there of the face of the common man. Behold, 
henceforth thou shalt not attempt to paint the face 
of any common man, but shalt find My face there 
also." 

It is a curious way of explaining that the painter 
was after all able to paint a miraculous likeness — 
one 710^ made by hands. The endeavour of all the 
mystical painters after him has been to paint a 
miraculous face in which the whole of praying and 
yearning and suff'ering, and even cursing humanity 
is somehow reflected. 

The shroud of Turin needs to be held to the light, 
and then the Divine features are vaguely apparent 




ox THE SHROUD OF TURIN. 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 61 

in the texture. Some one has said that the only- 
test of its genuineness would be a chemical analysis. 
The only test of the mystical portrait, however, is in 
that the common doubting man standing in front of 
it should confess, "My Lord and my God." If a 
man's heart is touched, Christ must be there to 
touch it. 

I show to an ordinary man a copy of Vasnetsof's 
wonderful picture. He gives it more attention than 
I expect, rivets his eyes upon it and wishes a copy 
for himself. "All portraits of Christ are failures, 
but this one somehow touches me. It is the first I 
ever cared for," says he. I show it to a lover and 
he wants it for his love, and to a politician and 
he wants to hang it in the Liberal Club. So it 
seems I find a common ground; for I also hail this 
face as that of Christ. 

I find a personality in myself which accepts the 
soul of the picture — it is the highest aspect of my 
personality, and I am ready to sacrifice all else to 
it. The ordinary man and the rest also find in the 
picture something which answers to a desire in 
themselves. I can therefore go back to the crowd 
and take the chance passer-by once more and find 



62 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

the Christ in him by aid of the picture, let him be 
Christ to me, and prompt the words of my drama. 

"You acknowledge this picture to be Christ," 
say I. "I also acknowledge it to be Him. But I 
do not feel I altogether know Him. I know partly 
what He was nineteen hundred years ago, but I 
urgently need to know what He is to-day, what He 
means now, and what are His intentions." I do not 
tell him of my mystery play, in which Christ must 
play the central part. But I ask him to tell me 
about the Divine Man he sees in my miraculous 
picture. 

He tells me he sees a Being infinitely understand- 
ing, infinitely loving. He sees the Redeemer. He 
tells me the face says to him that whoever despises 
him, there is One to whom he is not despicable, One 
who has a place for him in His kingdom. He finds 
the most complete consolation and reconciliation 
with destiny in the picture. 

"Is there one thing more than another that the 
picture means to you?" I ask. 

He blushes and looks awkward, as if I had un- 
covered a secret, but then takes faith through my 
earnestness, and answers in these words; 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 63 

"I should not have thought you needed to ask. 
To me it shows a face that understands com- 
pletely the torments of the desires of the flesh, one 
who understands that the flesh which lusts is not the 
ego, one who confirms a poor struggling failing 
being in His Godhead and does not leave him in 
death and disease. I see in that picture the out- 
stretched hand that saved Peter when he was sink- 
ing into the waves. I hold it and I get home." 

So that is what the picture means to the chance 
passer-by. 

I understand what I should not otherwise have 
guessed, that this brother human suff'ers torments 
through low desire. For him the title of the pic- 
ture might almost be "Saviour of all who suff'er 
from low desires." But the picture does not ap- 
peal to me in that way, and that aspect of it had not 
occurred to my mind. I take the picture to the 
man who for twenty years has lived the life of an 
ascetic, and he is as much enraptured by it as the 
other — but for a totally opposite reason. I tell 
my chance passer-by what for my part I find in the 
picture, and he disagrees with me, disagrees so vio- 
lently that he is almost ready to quarrel. So even 



64 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

the miraculous portrait is somewhat of a failure. 
At least I do not seem altogether to be able to find 
the new Christ among men by the help of it. 

I try the man who is tired of life: he sees the 
Christ who though He could save Himself refused 
to come down from the cross. I try the lover. He 
sees the link which unites him with his beloved. I 
try the politician, and he sees a face that men will 
die for. The scientist says it is the whole sense of 
Evolution: some call Him Evolution, others call 
Him God. The musician sees the substance of 
music; the poet of poetry; the sculptor divines form 
and majesty of bearing, the inner secret of out- 
ward beauty; the painter, the spirituality of the 
surface and the shadow; the soldier sees what 
makes for esprit de corps; the sailor sees the face 
among the stars. 

I am driven to the conclusion that wonderful as 
is this miraculous picture in that it can be Christ 
to so many different eyes, it is almost as much a 
failure as mankind is, inasmuch as besides reflect- 
ing Christ it reflects also endlessly broken and suf- 
fering and varying humanity. Each man sees the 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 65 

apology for his own life, and few are capable of 
seeing in it at the same time the apology for their 
neighbours' lives. There lie the limits of the pic- 
ture, or of humanity, or of myself. I suppose only 
in heaven is the archetype of the miraculous por- 
trait, only there is the great real Face with the 
myriads of changing reflections of humanity within 
it. And I cannot obtain that greater vision unless 
I find some one who can be a little window to heaven 
for me. 

I will try myself. Necessarily I am much less 
intimate with the chance passer-by than I am with 
myself. It is possible to probe a deeper abyss in 
my own soul than in that of my neighbour. It is 
difficult to probe far into a neighbour s soul. Even 
good manners keep one to the surface. It is in- 
discreet to put my questions to him, but I could not 
easily be indiscreet in the questions I put to my- 
self. 

There is a Christ in me: who is He? 'Tis not 
indiscreet to ask. Nevertheless some one in my 
being does feel taken aback even though / ask it. 
Though the question may not be indiscreet to ask, 



66 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

it may be indiscreet to answer. In any case, the 
question is too blunt and must remain unanswered 
for a while. 

I am a little shy of the Christ in me. To tell of 
Him is to turn into an egoist. For when He is in 
question I seem to place a value on myself higher 
than on any one else in the world. 

I suppose that if another were seeking Christ, as 
I do now, in the chance passer-by, and I passed by, 
he might discern behind my ordinary features those 
other shadowy and more beautiful lineaments 
which I for my part descry as I now look upon the 
man in the crowd. The mysterious better face of 
humanity stands behind me also. And it is the 
face of a person. I know that person — it is my 
alter ego. From lower nature, from the animal 
side of me of which the ego is instinctively ashamed, 
there is always another being growing invisibly. 
Something of Him is half -visible in my eyes. Yes, 
that is He. I should be a disgusting creature but 
for Him. In all this sordidness called life He just 
makes the difference between worth while and not 
worth while. 

"Hullo, little boy, you've been beaten," came 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 67 

His first whisper when He soothed me, and com- 
forted me, and dried my cheeks, and brightened my 
eyes, and bade me forget the shame and live as if 
it had not been. I forgot what I had been crying 
about, and forgot also the comforting and soothing 
other self till another occasion arose, and yet an- 
other. I became conscious of Him again on long 
walks, when my mind did not think, but was 
placidly set upon something unknown, unrealised. 
He was with me — or rather I was with Him. 

A boy's will is the wind's will, 

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. 

Yes, because he does not know what he is thinking. 
He feels out toward the ideal as plants turn to the 
sun. 

But the boy of these days was ill-kempt and un- 
tidy, speaking the language of the street, mischiev- 
ous and pugnacious. I did many things which 
caused me shame, and the prayers which my mother 
taught me to say at her knee I forgot. I used foul 
language, as we all did at school. Then later I 
voluntarily and on some mysterious impulse gave 
up the bad language and remembered the prayers I 



68 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

used to say. I began consciously to wish to be 
good, and experienced the sweet moments of new 
resolutions. I fought my way through jungles 
of sordid life, and though I failed and failed again, 
I had always a personal secret, a life which I led 
with an alter ego in myself. When in great diffi- 
culties I used to pray myself out of them, and when 
my mind began to analyse and ask questions con- 
cerning God, I used to answer thus: 

"The kingdom of heaven is within me, is it not? 
God is in heaven. God therefore is within me. 
And if I pray, I pray to one who is within me. 
God is almighty. Then with prayer I also might 
be almighty." 

All hymns about Jesus as friend appealed to 
me as to so many with soul-ravishing attractive- 
ness — 

I've found a Friend; such a Friend! 
He loved me ere I knew Him. 

That friend was the sweet, better personality in 
my bosom, my ideal self, my alter ego, as I have 
called Him. 

I began to have a period of love, and longing 
for self-sacrifice. I formed passionate attachments 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 69 

to various comrades. I had a childish desire to 
die for them somehow, to show how much I loved 
them, or that I might appear beautiful in their 
eyes. 

I also began to read various romances and fall 
in love with the heroes. After reading Morte 
D^ Arthur I dreamed myself Lancelot, and then 
Tristram, and then Galahad. After Ivanhoe I was 
Wilfrid. I rescued maidens and killed giants, and 
jousted with splendour at many tournaments. At 
the same time, however, was I not stupid, mulish, 
lazy, inaccurate, and mischievous? As a punish- 
ment I had once to write a hundred times in a fair 
hand, "Samson was a strong man, Solomon was a 
wise man, but I am a donkey," which I indeed slav- 
ishly wrote. 

The alter ego, however, was never touched by 
the world unless I felt shamed or hurt. And then 
He would come to the rescue and take me apart, 
and console me, and breathe secret life and power 
into me. 

So it was in the after years of first working for 
a living. The ideal personality obtained more 
sway in me, and I began to live in daily conscious- 



70 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

ness that I, the true ego of me, was a celestial being, 
one higher than any one dreamed or than I could 
openly assume. I grew in spiritual stature and 
watched myself changing. I marvelled at the new 
life. My direct centre of consciousness began to 
move from the lower towards the higher ego, and as 
it did so I became vocal and wrote poetry, read 
poetry, lived in poetry. I walked with feet on the 
earth and head in the sky. From then till now I 
have been conscious of a spiritual truth, in the 
atmosphere of which I have lived, so that all the 
negative values of earth-living have become posi- 
tive values of absolute-living. And I have grown 
to identify myself with the ideal personality within. 
Not that it is quite possible. There clings some- 
what of the lower, and as for the higher there re- 
mains an infinite which I have not reached. In- 
deed as I live from day to day, my alter ego, this 
Christ in me, seems to grow also, and projects be- 
yond me like a flower which the earth nurtures and 
loves. I am lured on further from day to day into 
a new spiritual plane where the flower is growing 
and budding. I call it a seeking, but it is in truth 
a becoming. 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 71 

Something I seem to be spending, and that is of 
the flesh, physical energy, lower life. But all the 
while I am becoming. I am growing into another 
plane. I am obtaining a higher consciousness. 

Belief in my ideal self, the almighty in me, has 
made me a sort of spiritual egoist. I might have 
been an egoist in a different way, it is true. I 
might have rejoiced in good looks, in physical 
strength, in scholarship or intellectual attainments, 
in will power or in success. Had I become a cham- 
pion boxer, I might have been an egoist for that 
reason. I might have been a great arithmetician, 
and have felt that I had no equal as a mathematical 
mind. I might have been honest, and accurate, 
and dutiful, and then possessed the egoism of the 
elder brother. I might have been a philosopher, 
an intellectual don, and been proud of my use of 
words and arguments as foils and fence. If I 
had been very heavy, I might have been proud 
of my weight. I might have been proud of con- 
quests among women. But instead of all these 
things I have the egoism of the failure who identi- 
fies himself not with the failing being, but with 
the celestial and almighty being within. 



72 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

When wrestled in the ring; when unable to com- 
pete with my neighbour in eating and drinking; 
when cut off from a lady's regard by some one more 
handsome; when admitting that my philosophical 
opponent has proved his case ; when found wanting 
as a model citizen; when reduced as a prodigal to 
feed among the swine, I have always had the joy of 
a spiritual reservation. Though among you, I am 
not of you; though beaten, I am unconquered and 
unconquerable. That is the egoism of the failure. 
He knows that there is something in him which does 
not fail. 

It leads to a higher consciousness. The ego 
tends to enlarge and take to itself something more, 
begins to find a common ground with the spiritual / 
in other people, and to experience a sense of unity 
with it. My ego extends to hold two, so that for 
the first time the first person plural in our Lord's 
prayer seems to be felicitous — ''Our Father which 
art in heaven." I strive to recognise in the mass 
of humanity the we of which this our is spoken. 
It is the unity of all the alter egos. The higher 
consciousness which I discern is the recognition of 
unity. I can love any one in whom I discern an 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 73 

ideal self over and above the ordinary self. The 
sense for this ideal self in every one prompted me 
to seek the Christ-face in the passer-by. And 
throughout my quest so far I have been preoccupied 
with the sense for unity. Now I am beginning to 
understand that not only have I a sense for unity 
but a knowledge of actual unity. 

All these other gleams of ideal personality in 
human beings are one and the same thing. Every 
man possesses an ideal self, whether he be con- 
scious of it or not, and all the ideal selves of all 
men are one and the same. They have the same 
consciousness and are truly one. They seem all 
separate and yet are all one body. There is one 
ideal body of all humanity — as it were a tree of 
Christ in our background. 

There must be an invisible system of branches 
connecting all individuals past and present and 
showing them as one system. It is all Christ. 
That is what He meant when He said, "I am the 
vine: ye are the branches" — I am the whole vine: ye 
are the branches which make up the vine. 

That is the Christ which I see. Yet He is not 
a tree. He is man and God. He is our sum total 



74 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

on the ideal side; He is also the smallest, most 
intimate, private friend; He is the face behind the 
ordinary face of the passing man. He has there- 
fore infinite variety of face and of expression; He 
is also one face, and one alone. He is sweet 
and wise, not predatory and brute-like. His 
substance is love. He is our leader. He is an 
invisible but truly infallible Pope. Or rather, He 
is almost visible: following Him, even though we 
discern Him vaguely, we cannot go wrong — the 
highest light of each individual being. Higher 
types of humanity are those in which He shines out 
more clearly ; degenerate types are those which are 
far from the consciousness of being Christ-men. 
Observe a divergence of opinion here as to who are 
degenerates. The common criterion is the super- 
man — ^he is a degenerate who is furthest from be- 
ing a Napoleon or a Sandow. But in this truer 
light of reason Napoleon himself may be a de- 
generate. The animal triumphant in man is de- 
generacy. 

Whilst thus I moralise there comes out of the 
crowd unbidden, uninvited, a new and unusual type 
of man, prompted somehow to apply himself to me. 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 75 

And instead of my choosing him as I have been 
choosing others and considering them, suddenly he 
chooses me. He is a Southern Slav, a representa- 
tive of one of the ruined peoples of the Balkans. 
His country, Serbia, is lost. He tells me he has 
ceased to be a Serb, because Serbia is not any more 
and cannot be again what it was, even if it should 
rise from death. He calls himself a European, 
and pleads that all should obtain, in addition to con- 
sciousness of nationality, the higher consciousness 
of being Europeans. With an almost alarming ra- 
pidity he engages me in most earnest converse. We 
walk along the crowded thoroughfare, and just 
ahead of us in the throng is a nurse wheeling out a 
young sleeping babe. "That child," says Dushan, 
"must first learn to be a human being, then to be 
English at the same time, then to be a simple human 
being, English and European at the same time, and 
then to be pan-human — 

Infant 

Individual 

National 

Group-national 

Universal 



76 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

The sun shines on the baby; it smiles and sneezes, 
as it were, at its tremendous programme — 

Worm 

Devil 

Man 

Christ 

God," 

says the Serb, "that is the true progress of hu- 
manity." 

I take him to my old professor, who expounds to 
him universal history, and the old man reacts to 
him perfectly. I have never seen more sense of 
unity and happiness than in these two scholars talk- 
ing to one another with the joy of children, and all 
about the Christ in whom all nations have lived and 
moved and had their being. 

I take him to my friends in turn, and he, unbal- 
anced and enthusiastic as he is, seems always to 
give them happiness, make them whole. They are 
the most varied of people, but this Dushan seems 
alive on all sides. He is a sort of mystical fraction 
which, added to any other fraction, always makes 
up unity. 

For no fraction is natural — or rather, all frac- 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 77 

tions are naturally complementary and wait for 
others to bring them to unity. Thus you may be 
seven twenty-thirds. Well, somewhere a sixteen 
twenty-thirds is waiting for you. I may be seven- 
tenths — somewhere there is a three-tenths waiting. 
Yonder fellow is a five ninety-ninths — somewhere 
must be a ninety-four ninety-ninths. But there 
exists a mystical fraction, a fraction which makes 
each different other fraction up to unity, can be the 
necessary sixteen twenty -thirds for you, but coming 
to me is at once changed to three-tenths; coming to 
the other it is his ninety-four ninety-ninths. Such 
would be a mystical or miracle-working fraction. 
This mystical fraction is Christ the man. He 
worked infinitely various miracles with men. 
Christ on the cross is the statement of the fraction, 
the fact, but also the hieroglyphic. For note : to be 
a fraction is to be broken. Christ on the cross can 
be applied to any human being who is living a par- 
tial existence and he will be saved, will be enfran- 
chised in the all. When the phrenologist said that 
the face of Christ was unbalanced, I felt that it was 
true. It had to be unbalanced to redress our infi- 
nitely varying deficiencies. His was a face in 



78 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

which must be myriads of complementary fractions. 

There is something of this nature about Dushan, 
that is why I have called him a mystical fraction, a 
phrase that I thought rightly applied only to Christ. 

The fact that Dushan has come is part of my 
seeking, or rather of my finding. He is going to 
help me to fill in the words of my drama. 

"You are seeking Christ?" says he. "You be- 
lieve in the unity of all in Him. Well, then, let us 
work for that unity, for the consciousness of it 
throughout the world. That is Christianity itself. 
If we can find ten who believe as you believe, then 
in ten years all Europe will realise Christ, and 
within our life-time China and India will come in. 
Let us begin to-day and endeavour to realise uni- 
versal consciousness of unity in Christ." 

We go out together to reconsider humanity, and 
I think now as I see the great throngs of humans, 
"Something is in you, something after all can be 
made out of you." First, we go to the slums, where 
fractional humanity seems so small that hundreds 
together might not make one. We pass along the 
river-side where the little houses of the poor are 
crowded around factories, and men, women, and 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 79 

children look to one point above them — the smoking 
summit of the high factory chimney. The wom- 
en's faces reflect soul-killing drudgery; the chil- 
dren's faces, though bright, are broken and spoiled, 
often perverted, or too dirty for even human fea- 
tures to be seen. Even so there seems more possi- 
bility of Christ's face being seen in the least of 
these than in the faces of their parents. They all 
live in a world we do not know. The air is differ- 
ent, and it is difficult for us to breathe, being full 
of the odours of chemicals and decay, as if human- 
ity had been disintegrated and by some ghastly arti- 
ficial process were being put together again. A 
thousand families are living day and night, and 
months and years in an atmosphere which we hurry 
through, in the odour of soap manufacture. An- 
other thousand are played on continually by blight- 
ing sulphurous fumes. Here comes a mulatto; he 
enters a wretched dwelling and is met by two yel- 
low girls and a yellow mother. No, not half- 
breeds; they have been so coloured by the fumes 
in which they work. On many men and women 
are unnatural scars and civilisation-marks. A 
strike is in progress and savage rebellion is written 



80 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

in many faces; there is visible an active will to 
make mischief and increase disaffection. We hear 
various expressions of opinion on their behaviour 
on the part of employers, the chief being that it is 
sad to see such a lack of the spirit of self-sacrifice, 
no one is ready to sink his personal interest for the 
bigger thing. The strikers are called shirkers. It 
is said with truth that no one will do any more 
work than he is forced to do, even when he is satis- 
fied with the terms of his employment. Young folk 
talk of giving up everything and going on their own, 
or going to America, of "cutting themselves adrift." 
Young men are sacrificing others to their own life 
and freedom; young women also; though it is 
equally true that many are sacrificing their own 
life and freedom and chances of development for 
others who depend on their work. The former are 
despised by employers, the latter petted and ap- 
proved. The married men are considered better 
"hands" because it is less easy for them to rebel. 
To the free and unencumbered younger ones the 
employer says, "You must look at your work hero- 
ically. Remember that it is your duty. It is the 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 81 

place to which God has called you. Your happi- 
ness lies in fulfilling your part well. You must 
not take a narrow and selfish point of view. Hu- 
manity is in reality all one, and if you do your 
part the whole body politic is the gainer. You 
want to cut yourself adrift, but you know what the 
poet says: 

To be a whole is to be small and weak, 
To be a part is to be great and mighty." 

On hearing this advice we are somewhat aston- 
ished, hearing our own gospel used to enforce indus- 
trial slavery. The sense of the verse is haunting — 
"To be a part is great and mighty." Part of what? 
That, I suppose, is the great question. So Dushan 
asks: To be part of what? The employer gazes 
at us, and then waves his hand about him, indicat- 
ing factory shafts and warehouses and workshops, 
bridges, cranes, viaducts, houses and shops, 
churches. "It is visible," says he. "It's all about 
you: part of all that. Is that not grand enough?" 

"That is sufficiently curious," says Dushan, smil- 
ing. "We must have more of that English poem. 
That cannot be what the poet intended. To be one 



82 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

brick in Jerusalem the Heavenly is to be truly- 
great, but to be a mighty pillar in Rome itself is to 
be too small." 

We meet a writer on the staff of a powerful news- 
paper; he writes articles every day, printed without 
a signature. He also tells us he has grasped the 
great truth, that to be a part is to be great and 
mighty. He could not hope to wield the power he 
has if he came out and wrote simply for himself 
and from himself what he had to say. He is proud 
to be part of a great newspaper, of a great col- 
lective expression of opinion. 

We meet many priests, and they also are proud 
to be part, Dushan does not like the official as 
such. But the priest tells us what a difference it 
makes when a man puts on the vestments of God. 
Just as a raw youth obtains a certain dignity not 
his own when he puts on the uniform of soldier, or 
policeman, or commissionaire; he becomes greater 
because he has given up his individuality to become 
part of something larger. So in the highest degree 
with the man who enters the Church; he becomes 
something greater than he could ever hope to be as 
an individual. When he is ordained he gives up 



J THE FACE OF CHRIST 83 

the rhythm of his old life. The simple way is 
merged in a greater way, and he finds that instead 
of walking apart he is marching in the great pro- 
cession of the Church. 

But is it really so in reality? Does not the 
young priest seem to have lost when he puts on the 
"cloth" or his vestment? Is he not actually handi- 
capped by it? It might become true if each priest 
were at liberty to think out his own vestment and 
express through it his particular relationship to 
God and to us all. But then the idea of uniform 
would be lost. For my part, I think the leaves of 
the Bible meant more before they were put into 
the uniform of print. When each illuminator 
glorified the Word variously there was more life. 
There is an unmistakable sense of greater truth and 
life in an illuminated Bible than in a printed one. 
When you read a chapter which has been illumi- 
nated it is as if reading the chapter for the first 
time. There is the same difference felt in the con- 
trast of the wafer with its mechanically produced 
emblem of Christ crucified imprinted upon it and 
the simple broken bread. On the whole, uniform 
in religion is a handicap disguising the glory of the 



84 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

multiform. The unity of the Church is an inner 
unity, not an outer one. 

I find agreement with this thought more among 
Puritan ministers and the Friends, but complete 
disagreement in the priest of the Catholic Church. 
Each Roman priest, however humble, has the con- 
sciousness of being part of the greatest organisation 
of the visible Church. All members of that Church 
have also that sense of being part of a mighty 
whole, of something which now is great and shall 
be universal. They do not deny inner unity, but 
do require an external unity. 

"The Church of Rome, however, even with suc- 
cess, the vast material success which it requires, 
would not correspond to the vision that human con- 
sciousness already holds of a universal spiritual 
unity which might be realisable," said the Serbian. 
"There is a worldly as well as a spiritual truth in 
the words of the poet. But we must find out how 
the poem goes on." 

We go into a public library and a librarian finds 
for us the necessary volume of Kingsley. Ah, yes, 
here it is, here are the words: 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 85 

To be a whole is to be small and weak, 
To be a part is to be great and mighty, 
In the one spirit of the mighty whole, 
The spirit of the martyrs and the saints. 

Dushan, in excitement, strikes me on the back as I 
read. I give the book back. "We know now," 
cries the Serbian, "what it is necessary to be a part 
of in order to be truly great and mighty — not civi- 
lisation, not the 'combine,' not the visible Church, 
but part of the communion of saints, part of the 
living and the dead in Christ, the all-one, the intan- 
gible and unseen Christendom." 

The Quest of the Face resolves into a quest of 
that true splendour, the endeavour to obtain a true 
and complete and ever-present consciousness of its 
existence. The great mystery play has a role for 
all humanity. "All true Christian things must be 
joined," says my friend. "Our activities can be 
manifold. We approach each new person on his 
characteristic and individual side. One way in 
which the face of Christ may be seen is through 
the unity of Christendom. At present Christendom 
seems to be divided against itself. We must work 
for the consciousness of unity in all churches. I 



86 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

do not mean a unity brought about by denying all 
creeds except one, but a unity brought about by 
correlating and including all creeds." 

"Not by creed-smashing, as the American phrase 
goes," I interject. 

"No, rather by creed-building and creed-support- 
ing." 

"You want a true Catholic Church?" 

"Yes." 

"But in what way would united Christendom 
differ from the Roman Church if its dream were 
fully realised?" 

"You would see the difference. Roman Catholic 
Christendom disallows other modes of expression 
than its own. In modern times it has become more 
liberal and tolerant outwardly than of old. But 
the essence of its idea is still a universal uniform- 
ity. It has a standardised Christianity and has one 
pattern which it wishes all men to wear. Those 
who will not wear it are still tacitly heretics. In a 
lesser way other churches are chargeable on the 
same count. But the true united Christendom will 
be one of complete mutual understanding. Toler- 
ance must come first, and then joy in difference, 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 87 

glory to God for the diversity of His creatures." 
God, we agree, is no Hindenburg, no Kaiser, he 
is not a Prussian God imposing obedience. If He 
were, it would be quite simple, since He is omnipo- 
tent, to correct humanity to type. We know 
through Christ God does not expect us to conform 
to a type. He leaves us free as He has made us 
diverse. And the world in which we live is a mar- 
vellous diversity. The rose is not wrong, the lily 
is not wrong, the lion is not absurd, the tiger is not 
absurd, diamond does not contradict ruby. And 
in the same way man is compatible with man. 
There is a Diogenes and an Edison, an Achilles and 
a Bertrand Russell, and Zoroaster and General 
Booth and St. Peter and St. John, and Henry VIII. 
and Henry VI., and St. Sava and Father Nicholas, 
and the Archbishop of Canterbury and St. Francis 
of Assisi, and for an endless diverse humanity 
glory to God for ever and ever. Amen. 

Through Christ we understand that the way of 
the Spirit is the way of truth. The Spirit mani- 
fests itself passively in an infinite number of ways. 
It should also manifest itself actively in as many 
ways. 



88 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

"And the unity?" I ask. 

"The unity is the consciousness that no one true 
way of expression contradicts any other true way. 
In that consciousness is unity. And for that the 
time has come to strive. All the sects and churches 
of the world are waiting in the darkness; but it is 
just before dawn. The connections between them 
will soon be seen: all will see them. 

"But that is only a small part of the task. The 
visible churches as such are a very small fraction 
of humanity. They are good, but up till now, and 
perhaps still for a long while, they stand in the way 
of the realisation of a greater thing. Their of- 
ficial stamp, their rigidity is standing in the way of 
a free and living Christianity. There are millions 
of men and women who are in Christ yet not in 
any of the official churches. They must not be for- 
gotten. The Christian consciousness of joy and 
love and unity must be brought to them in larger 
and ever larger numbers — so as to form a sort of 
invisible and unexpected complement to the 
churches. 

"The churches are so hard to-day that the dress 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 89 

and style of the priests and curates and ministers 
are unpopular with large masses of the people. 
And indeed those who wear the cloth are badly- 
handicapped by it — worse handicapped by ecclesi- 
astical system. Christianity has in it a stupendous 
depth of philosophic truth. It is so marvellous 
that it can win its way almost by itself — but not 
quite. It must be spread from heart to heart, can- 
not come simply from nowhere to the heart. It is 
an easy doctrine to propound and it is not difficult 
to bring it to the heart of a man. But how slow 
the progress along official ways! 

"India, China, Japan, all must be brought in, and 
would be brought in if the best Christians went to 
them. But we do not send out our best. We send 
often stupid or shallow men who strive for numbers 
of baptisms, for vulgar number, not esteeming the 
deep religion and profound though old philosophic 
truth in the mind and tradition of the East. I 
know Buddhism, Confucianism, Brahminism, — 
these philosophies are deep and true. They are 
not shallow or absurd, they are not of the nature 
of idolatry or obscure nature-worship, and when 



90 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

we send out men to bring fine thinkers and religious 
men to Christ we need to send the wisest that we 
have." 

"Yes," said the Serb, with large eyes, "it could 
be done; the churches could be brought to Christ, 
those outside the churches and all the East. Then 
united humanity would be at hand. And when 
we are all one and at peace we shall see the Mas- 
ter coming. That is what you have asked to see, 
is it not, my friend?" 

"Yes, even so." 

Something further should follow from the union 
of Christendom and the mutual joy of the sects, 
and that is the union of the nations. As the true 
universal Church should include all the smaller 
would-be churches, so humanity, the true nation of 
God, should exhibit the mutual joy of all the would- 
be chosen nations. Nations are the sects of hu- 
manity as individuals are the sects of the nations. 
They are not meant to destroy one another but to 
amplify one another — to amplify one another to- 
ward the perfect man. French and Germans 
should in friendship make something larger than 
either. Russians and English should magnify one 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 91 

another. Greeks and Italians and Serbs and Bul- 
gars and Norwegians and Swedes, Spanish and 
Portuguese, instead of being jealous of one another, 
should be neighbours in Christian communion. 

Yet if these high ideals are to be practically 
consummated, Christ in man must be an ascendant 
force, must be more and more triumphant in indi- 
viduality. If the devil in man, or the animal, is 
the real characteristic thing, this can never come 
about. If ill-will, malevolence, hate, enmity, are 
characteristic, this can never come about. If sati- 
ety and normality, content and servility, the readi- 
ness to be a happy slave, are characteristic traits 
of humanity, then these high ideals can never be 
realised in any objective way. They can only exist 
as dreams in individual human hearts, as the tran- 
scendent realities of individual human lives. 

If Nietzsche was altogether right, we are wrong. 
If Napoleon was right, we are wrong. If Rubeck 
was right, we are hopelessly wrong. If men are 
animals, we are wrong; if they are devils, we are 
wrong. 

Dushan, who now leads in the adventure, turns 
his head less over his shoulder than I. He has a 



92 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

more stedfast vision. He is the man vouchsafed 
to me from the crowd, and I shall faithfully record 
his words. He comes to me one evening, and I tell 
him as much as I can of my quest and my need. 
It appears that before I saw him he was as eager 
in the quest as I. We are two independent seekers 
who have met on life's road, an Englishman and a 
Slav, very different, and yet having the greatest of 
all things in common, a similar spiritual desire. 

"Let us start a new social life," says he, "and 
begin an unorganised society to stand instead of 
Church and State. Let us begin seriously to realise 
the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth. What is the 
use of going on for ever in the old way of politics, 
revenge, wars, separation? Let us pray for the 
end of the world, and prepare to make it ready for 
the end. The Church, the churches as churches 
stand in the way, as do statues and idols; they are 
all too visible and palpable. They have all con- 
tradicted one another in the Great War, have they 
not? Not one has gone against the State with 
which it was associated. Each and every has 
blessed the cause and the killing. Because they 
have been organised they have failed. Nothing 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 93 

organised as we understand organisation can be 
part of the fabric of heaven. Everything that ever 
has been or ever will be organised will be struck 
as with a bar of iron and dashed in pieces like a 
potter's vessel. It was left out of the old Judaic 
commandments: Thou shalt not organise; and it 
seems the Jews had more grace than we. It could 
not even enter their minds to imagine that the King- 
dom could be organised. Though there were occa- 
sions when the unwritten commandment was in- 
fringed, as when David took a census of his people 
and was punished for that departure from depend- 
ence upon the immeasurable power of God. We 
for our part must be without visible form. We 
must be Christendom itself — the universal and indi- 
visible. 

"A universal society, unorganised, with no list 
of members, no subscriptions, no president or com- 
mittee, no patrons, vice-patrons, no publicity or 
appeals to the Press. Every new member shall be 
a first member, and ought to tell others whom he 
meets, even if they be ourselves, what are the prin- 
ciples of the society as he conceives of them." 

"I don't quite see this society coming into being. 



94 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

How can we realise such a society without organ- 
isation?" say I. 

"The new society is consciousness," he replies. 
"It is the mutual knowledge of Christian people 
that one and another have the Kingdom in their 
heart and eyes and the will to the building of it 
guiding their hands and feet. It is brotherhood 
and friendship and faith in an illimitable unseen 
brotherhood. It is a discovering of that which is 
even now existent in its beginnings but not visible." 

"The Kingdom?" 

"The Kingdom of Heaven at present latent in 
space, latent in society and the universe. It is held 
negatively in the air. What we have to do is to 
bring it on to the positive side, develop it." 

To this I agree. 

"Very good, let us begin," says he. "We must 
find those who are in agreement with us in spirit 
and in life, and realise in them a sacred fellowship, 
setting them on to realise the same in others. 
Whenever you meet a new face and can say in 
your heart — 'So you also are of the Kingdom,' the 
society has been made larger by one man and the 
unity of Christendom has been extended." 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 95 

In every man the face of Christ is to be descried. 
It follows, therefore, that every man in the world 
is on his ideal side qualified to enter this society 
and be part of it, part of the sacred communion 
of the universal and intangible Christendom. 

It is something to work for, a quest to live for. 
And we look on men's faces anew. 

The first man, however, whom we meet, and to 
whom we communicate the idea, gives us some dis- 
couragement. He is deeply interested, follows our 
thought closely, but eventually gives his verdict in 
these words: "Very idealistic: very, very wonder- 
ful ; the most desirable thing that could possibly be 
imagined, and yet you know I hardly think it likely 
to be realised." 

And he takes the idea and converses with many 
concerning it, makes it in fact a charming item of 
talk at ladies' tea-parties. And he always adds 
his remark, "Very idealistic, but not likely to come 
to anything, you know!" 

Says Dushan, "In every man there is Christ, but 
only in that man is there no Christ whatever." 

That, however, is uncharitable. He is only suf- 
fering from a sort of knock-knees, which is called 



96 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

the English disease abroad, a type of paralysis of 
will, perhaps, accompanied with a mania for being 
a looker-on, a watcher and criticiser, not a doer 
and maker in the realm of the mind and the heart. 
Very characteristically twenty-two men play a 
match in our national game, and a hundred thou- 
sand look on and criticise and lay odds. Even in 
politics half the nation is looking on and watching, 
priding itself on anticipating the result, not so much 
wanting a side to win as wanting to be on the win- 
ning side. They do not so readily throw them- 
selves into the cause which they think true and 
good, and work for it as if they had the power to 
realise it against any odds in the world. Our 
English disease — the disease of looking on. 

At the outset also we come upon another who 
gives us pause, a third man working in the back- 
ground of everyday life for the realisation of Chris- 
tianity. He does not believe, but has this credo: 
Christianity has never been tried, so it is not a 
failure; why not give it a chance? This is Mr. 

H , with his beautiful wife. They wish to 

form a new political party, the party of common 
sense. Christianity to them is the supreme com- 



I THE QUEST OF THE FACE 97 

mon sense, the obvious thing which nobody will 
try! To them the advancement of the Kingdom is 
the giving of more education, the raising of wages 
and salary, the striking away of the fetters of servi- 
tude, the nationalisation of justice (the defraying 
of all law costs by the State), model housing, and 
minimum wages. As the party is the party of 
common sense, any one of intelligence is qualified 
to belong to it, even if in opposition to the pro- 
gramme it puts forth. It welcomes those of differ- 
ing views, and appeals to all to co-operate for the 
general good. Here is Christianity masked by a 
practical programme — Peter's voice saying, "Let 
us build three tabernacles." But since they are so 
charitable, it follows we can help them. They be- 
lieve very strongly in organisation; in fact they 
think all human ills can be removed by it. What 
is beautiful at least is that they desire to raise 
humanity. We long to give them the sense of the 
great consciousness. There may come a time when 
the idea of an unseen Kingdom of Heaven, which 

might seem laughable to Mr. and Mrs. H 

now, will be for them as realisable as for us. 

At the outset also behold a novelist promulgating 



98 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

the idea of a Theocracy: the dethronement of all 
visible kings in favour of an invisible one, namely 
God; the effigies of kings to be removed from our 
stamps and coins and the emblem of the dove to be 
substituted, so that it would be impossible for 
Christ again to find the image and superscription 
of Caesar on the money which should be paid as 
tribute. The novelist foresees the Kingdom. In 
this kingdom he says that when a lawyer becomes 
convinced that the client he is defending is in the 
wrong he will either give up his case or do his best 
to persuade the client to admit that he is not right. 
Rather an astonishing idea that lawyers will be 
necessary in the Kingdom, that they will still have 
any function to perform — a kingdom controlled by 
justice! The God of this kingdom is the "Captain 
of mankind," and He is served by a world of obedi- 
ent individuals wholly efficiently serving Him. It 
seems to us to be a sort of Prussia transmuted into 
the domain of the eternal and absolute, with God 
as a blameless and perfect Kaiser. But I am cer- 
tain that a kingdom founded on obedience rather 
than on impulse, and on justice rather than on love, 
is an anachronism. That is Babel, the tower to 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 99 

which the tireless builders continually return, no 
matter how often its own inherent instability brings 
it down. Human personality is not in the nature 
of brick and beam, and that which joins us and 
makes us one, the cement of our eventual union, 
must have life in it, love in it. There are two 
opposite types of building: Babel and Sophia; 
Babel is the seemingly obvious and childish way of 
reaching Heaven. Babel is built with square 
blocks ; it is structure founded on justice and right. 
Sophia is a temple not made by hands. Sophia is 
built of living bricks; it is founded on the love of 
God. Babel is superstitious alchemy; Sophia is 
spiritual alchemy. The objection which Catholics 
have to Masonry is that the Masons are builders of 
Babel; they inherit the traditions of Babel and 
would always restore Babylon, that is "the world," 
the material — evil Rome. But there are also spir- 
itual masons, namely, those in the living wall of 
the Heavenly Jerusalem. Does not the secret of 
success in building lie in the architectural concep- 
tion, in the places allocated to certain stones (for 
the stone which the builders rejected is the head- 
stone of the comer), and is not the infinite stability 



100 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

which is desired only to be obtained by a living 
cement which grows from and is grown into — the 
cement which is love? The theocracy of the In- 
visible King is the dream of a completed and stable 
Tower of Babel. But the voice of the novelist is 
the voice of the people thinking about change. I 
also read in his pages that he renounced the desire 
for personal immortality. His immortality shall 
be God. Once he rejoiced in the poet who wrote: 

I thank whatever gods there be 
For my unconquerable soul; 

now his immortality is God. It bodes well to hear 
such a thought whispered in the streets by the man 
in the crowd. For to find one's immortality in God 
is to find it in the changeless and eternal Christen- 
dom which is now and is for ever. 

I am in the midst of the world. Yes: I am also 
in the midst of the Church, in the midst of the true 
communion of Jesus. I am reminded of this by 
the example of my more intimate friends. They 
are such wonderful people. There is not one about 
whom one might not write a long novel. And even 
then no Dostoievsky could fully bring out the mar- 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 101 

vellousness of God's creative hand apparent in 
their souls. There is not a friend who does not 
upon occasion make the heart ache by the infinite 
wonder of his nature. It evokes that which one 
can seldom show — a wish to help in life, to love 
and express love vitally and openly. The pathos 
of that consciousness is that the friend cannot meet 
friend, cannot be one with him when he has that 
insight into him. He remains apart and knows not 
what is in the other's heart. It is perchance for 
him a secular moment. It will be at a different 
time when the other's mind is full of secular care 
that he will look at him with the same aching joy 
and pain of knowledge and love. But for me it 
seems now that I am on the way to bridge over this 
separating ground by that mutual Christian con- 
sciousness in which it may be possible to exist and 
work. 

I bring Dushan to Mr. N , whose greatest 

interest in life is the treatment of children. I re- 
member how he came in one day from visiting a 
home for boys, one for which he had lately become 
in a way responsible as patron and magistrate. 
"There has been an unpleasant case," said he. "A 



102 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

boy has been found out in picking the pockets of 
the others. Marked coins were put in overcoat 
pockets, and one of the boys was found with the 
same marked coins in his possession. The mas- 
ter's idea was to cane him and expel him, send him 
away. But I said to him, 'It is no use sending him 
away to make trouble in some other place. The 
boy is your responsibility, and you've got to look 
after him.' I put it to the rest of the boys that 
they should decide what his punishment should be, 
and they made several suggestions, chiefly of 
thrashings. 'Well,' said I, 'I leave it to you boys 
to decide what is to be done. Remember he is one 
of you, and you can't get rid of him by sending 
him away, and you've got to go on living with him 
after you've punished him!' " 

That is most characteristic of my friend Mr. 

N . He is a practical Christian of to-day: he 

is after Dostoievsky. 

Dushan does not at first see how this attitude 
touches us or the unorganised society. But I ex- 
plain how it appears to me one point of departure 
for the practical realisation of the Kingdom. The 
large thing has always its integral unit, which is a 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 103 

small and seemingly trivial thing when taken by 
itself. The new attitude is the practical aspect of 
a new heart. The new action follows from it. 

Mr. N and his wife are two of the moving 

spirits who brought into existence the Children's 
Commonwealth, a republic of child "criminals" 
which manages its own affairs, rules itself, insti- 
tutes its own laws, elects its parliament, its judges, 
and officers. Here the treasurer of the republic is 
one who was sent as an incorrigible thief, the de- 
spair of magistrates; the judge is a lad who has 
been several times birched. Boys and girls have 
equal rights in every department, and the good 
little mothers of the various public tables have been 
very naughty girls in the outside world. 

One might well ask, Whatever would become of 
a state composed entirely of thieves, incendiaries, 
rascals, and beggars? Would it not be impossi- 
ble? The righteous, including possibly ourselves, 
hold up our hands in horror. But we are mistaken. 
The so-called criminals are much more like our- 
selves than we take them to be. They will do all 
right if trusted. Distrust no doubt brings out the 
things we fear. Possibly all the crime in the world 



104 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

is caused by distrust. Distrust is expecting the 
devil or animal in man to win; trust is expecting 
the Christ to win. 

The attitude toward children can thus be a start- 
ing-point for practical Christianity. Under the old 
system the children had to be severely disciplined 
and watched over, punished, and upon occasion 
expelled. The schoolmaster was the tyrant. 
Under the new system which is now to be found 
here and there in Europe the child is trusted, dis- 
cipline is left largely to the children themselves; 
they have freedom, and it is found that in that 
freedom they teach themselves more, and make a 
truer start in life than under the rigid standardising 
system. Montessori is practical Christianity. 
Old education endeavours to produce a type, or 
raise to a given standard. New education recog- 
nises that each individual human heart is different 
and is capable of a distinct perfection of its own. 
The true natural beauty in each child must be al- 
lowed to develop, must not be curbed in favour of 
some governmental standard. 

In a school there is one boy meant to be a 
lyrical poet, another to be a wanderer and seeker, 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 105 

a third to be a student and lover of birds, a fourth 
to be a soldier, a fifth to be a priest, a sixth to be 
a preacher, a seventh to be a fisherman, an eighth 
to be a farmer, but all are being trained to be 
clerks and taught shorthand and indexing and com- 
mercial geography; or they are being given a 
gentleman's education and standardised on dead 
French and Latin and Greek and remote unneces- 
sary science. They are not given scope to show 
their natural gifts and propensities, and so they 
die or are warped — most commonly warped. The 
least gifted become often the best scholars and the 
most gifted commit crimes. 

The masters believe in themselves, in their 
boards and birches and syllabuses and curriculums, 
examinations, and prizes. They do not believe in 
the children. But this attitude is going. The chil- 
dren themselves must be allowed to humanise these 
pedagogic houses of correction. They must be 
given all manner of power of initiation in educating 
themselves. I like that custom which exists in one 
of the public schools of Britain, of granting sanc- 
tuary to the boy during the first fortnight of his 
school life. During that first fortnight at school he 



106 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

may commit any crime he likes — against the 
school laws, against his masters, against his fellow- 
pupils — and no punishment whatever will come to 
him from the school authorities. In that fortnight 
the boy realises, as a rule, that the wrong he does 
merely injures his fellow and does not do him 
personally any good whatever. After the first fort- 
night he keeps the school rules much better than 
he would have done if he had not learned what it 
meant to break them. That is a good start. 

To believe practically in the inherent goodness 
of the child is a long step toward believing in the 
goodness of humanity. As at a turn in my quest 
I part company with a friend and I seek the Christ 
in the passing crowd, he the superman, devil or 
animal, so he who trusts the child, even the child- 
criminal, is with us, and he is co-operating with the 
eternal spiritual tendencies. 

We set out, therefore, to find teachers and school 
inspectors who have faith, and we acquaint them 
with one another and with the larger vision of which 
their little parts are essential portions. And it 
greatly rejoices those whom we find: the message 
is one for which they have been yearning. Living 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 107 

in isolation, often condemned by those around 
them, they have often despaired and almost given 
up. But the practical realisation that many are 
working with them and that they belong to a great 
company confirms them and nourishes them. Our 
message is Christ the living bread, which must come 
to those working, as the poet said, "in the squalid 
streets of Bethnal Green." 

One day a political agent came to one whom we 
know and wished him to have his name placed on 
a register so that he might have full rights of citi- 
zenship and vote at the next election. It was an 
extraordinary bathos; for he had just obtained en- 
franchisement of the Kingdom and had turned his 
face toward a different capital and seat of govern- 
ment. 

The attitude towards children is bed-rock. For 
the child comes before the man. But when school 
life gives way to the freer and more responsible 
existence there is a similar new Christian attitude 
toward one's fellow-man, towards society as a 
whole, a new social criterion or standard. 

Dushan told me that as a child he was not 
brought up on Christian principles, but obtained 



108 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

his joys by stealth like a little Spartan, and his 
joys were in breaking laws. Laws were made to 
be broken, and the resultant punishments were the 
obvious hazards for a game. He learned in the 
larger school of life — is learning in that school. 
And we may fittingly ask at this stage of the quest, 
"What exactly is wrong with this larger school of 
the world? What is really old-fashioned, out of 
date there?" 

Be it remarked in passing that whatever is wrong 
is really old-fashioned, very old-fashioned. We 
can safely reproach the criminal in that he is very 
old-fashioned and out of date in his doings — "Oh 
dear, you are terribly old-fashioned, fearfully out 
of date, shockingly unoriginal — like the story of 
Cain and Abel, or of David and Uriah." 

What are the old-fashioned things in the school 
of the world? We recognise them at once: 

Hate. 

Punishment. 

Readiness to condemn: intolerance. 

Mechanical control of individuals. 

The servility of the masses. 

The consequent vulgarity. 

Man not living according to his true dignity. 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 109 

The feeling of being responsible for oneself alone 
and not in any way responsible for what 
others do. 

These things are not separate, but part of an old 
ramshackle system according to which man has 
hitherto lived. 

The righteous magistrate is of opinion that Mr. 
X, who lives on the immoral earnings of a woman, 
must be severely flogged. He does not see that if 
that is so, he, the magistrate, ought also to be 
flogged, and so ought I — indeed, who ought not? 
As when Christ defended the woman accused of 
adultery, there is no one without sin in this matter. 
Mr. X exists, therefore I partly live on the immoral 
earnings of a woman, so does the righteous magis- 
trate. 

Mrs. J. has been convicted of fiendish cruelty to 
children. "Is she not to be punished, then?" asks 
the magistrate. In Mrs. J. the fiend is predomi- 
nant, the devil has got a-top. And, as we know, 
there is a devil in all of us — only most of us strive 
away from it toward the Christ in us. Humanity 
on the whole tends toward Christ, not toward the 
devil. Still Mrs. J. and her like exist in the midst 



110 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

of us. What is to be done with her? She cannot 
be allowed to go on torturing children. On the 
other hand, it is no use lashing her or giving her 
penal servitude. Most probably she could not be 
otherwise than she is. Through fear of conse- 
quences we might force her to keep her hands off 
the children. But then she would go about the 
world with hating and malignant eyes. Her voice 
would obtain a new wickedness. She would bring 
out the devil of cruelty in others, suggest the lust of 
torture to minds where Christ and devil are only 
just balanced. It is better to make for her a spe- 
cial sort of asylum, have horror at the devil, and 
stand in an attitude of patient love towards her. 
For her true ego is not this hating, torturing spirit. 
An old devil, from which humanity as a whole is 
moving away, is localised in her and has terrific 
power. The devil, being purged from the body 
politic, has come to a loathsome head at one spot, 
that spot is this Mrs. J. 

The problem cannot be solved right out but it will 
be solved in time. We can best help by under- 
standing what subconscious spiritual suffering goes 
on in the being of the cruel person, by remaining 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 111 

in an attitude of love, remembering that in the cruel 
one we also are cruel, we have an ex-physical strain 
of cruelty localised in Mrs. J. or in her like. 

Individual wisdom prompted by love must be 
allowed to deal with such cases. It does not mat- 
ter what the treatment is as long as the attitude is 
true. Getting rid of the devil or animal or lower 
being altogether is a difficult problem and a long 
problem, but we are more on the way to it when we 
are prejudiced by the spirit of love and the sense 
of unity. 

We loathe the procurer, the child -torturer, the 
street-woman, the person who for any reason has 
ever been in prison, the divorced, the bankrupt, the 
publicly disgraced, the quack prophet, the hypo- 
crite, the person belonging to the opposite party, 
the publican, the drunkard, the gambler, the fraud- 
ulent company-promoter, the self-advertiser, the 
person who belongs to a different sect of the 
Church, the man who loves incense and ritual, the 
dull Puritan, the eccentric believer, the psychic, the 
spiritualist, the Theosophist, the person who says he 
believes but understands nothing, the person who 
seems to understand but does not believe, the per- 



112 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

son who dresses differently, lives in a different 
type of house, the person "mad" for a different 
hobby, the vegetarian, the meat-eater ... to an 
infinity of diversified dislike or disgust. 

It's all very old-fashioned. Instead of this intol- 
erance let us seek joy in difference, joy in God's 
handiwork, delight in manifold expression; instead 
of condemnation and hate, understanding and love ; 
instead of punishments and deterrents, means of 
putting in the true way of life and understanding. 

It is said that hate gives life a zest and an inter- 
est. It may be so, but it is nothing to the zest and 
interest which come through understanding. Even 
the study of natural history gives a satisfying joy, 
and if the ways of men and women be studied 
merely on the low level of natural history, there is 
a greater joy than in intolerance and hate. And 
natural history is a stepping-stone to Divine history. 

There are two paths : one, the path of mechanical 
control; the other, the path of self-realisation.^ 
The first path is the old, the second the new. The 
first is checked by condemnation of error and pun- 

1 Developed with literary power in JFhat Is and What Might 
Be, by Edmond Holmes. 



1 THE FACE OF CHRIST 113 

ishment; the second must be allowed to be checked 
by the promptings of the individual human heart 
with infinite allowance made. 

In the great community of humanity — I do not 
mean merely the crowd, but in the great community 
of which the passing crowd is a part — there is a 
becoming, a changing. New types are being cast 
up and may be found. These new types are not the 
supermen so confidently expected a while ago, but 
Christ-types. I do not mean prophet-types, though 
the character and life of these new types has in it 
something of the prophetical. The types of which 
I speak are those we seek — the men and women 
whose steps are turning naturally along the new 
path. For instance, all who make spiritual choice 
are of the new; those who simply obey are of the 
old. Those who go out on adventures involving 
pain and hardship are of the new; those who cling 
to the comfort of the obvious are of the old. Those 
who take their stand as animals, even cheerful and 
intellectual animals, are of the old; but those who 
deny the animal are of the new. The egoist is of 
the old, the altruist of the new, the narrow family 
man and family woman are of the old, the one 



114 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

who can extend his kinship is of the new; the merely 
national is of the old, the universal of the new. 
Those who hate, separate off, standardise human 
beings for commercial or military ends are of the 
old; those who love, join together, and delight in 
diversity are of the new. Those who stand on their 
human dignity are of the old ; those who understand 
their spiritual dignity are of the new. Those who 
blame others or seek to exonerate themselves are of 
the old ; those who take sins upon themselves are of 
the new. Those who wish the world to be con- 
trolled by justice are of the old; those who are 
ready to solve any legal count against them by 
love and sacrifice are of the new. "For the law 
was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by 
Jesus Christ." And out of all the new the invisible 
company of the Church is forming, coming into 
being, into a mutual consciousness; and I see the 
old receding and the new increasing, as it were 
morning light pouring into a night which has been 
partly of sleep and partly of troubled dreams and 
meditations. 

Not that the old does not seem to return, and 
midnight darkness seem to threaten dawn. In 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 115 

church one Sunday Dushan and I hear a preacher 
say: "When I was young I dwelt mostly in the 
New Testament, but the older I get the more do I 
return to the Old. And the time in which we live 
seems to be an Old Testament time. We are now 
two thousand five hundred years before Christ, in 
the reign of King Hezekiah." He did not under- 
stand the naivete of the confession that for him it 
would be two thousand five hundred years before 
Christ was even bom! "But that is nothing," says 
the Serb. "There are many who are much further 
back than Hezekiah, many who have not even 
reached the Old Testament. We must not despair 
if even the Pope himself were to preach that ser- 
mon. The Pope has said that the force of right 
should displace the force of might, and that the 
world quarrel should be settled on lines of equity 
and justice.* That is really an Old Testament 
utterance, though it has seemed too advanced for 
half Europe, even so. But we should not doubt 
that the real date is A. D. 1918 and not 2500 B. c." 
"Why do you think the Pope is Old Testament?" 
I ask. 

1 Papal Note of August 1, 1917. 



116 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

"Well," says Dushan, "the force of might, the 
ordinary force of the war, is barbarian, is it not? 
It is pre-Old Testament. Right came by Moses 
with the Commandments. That is Old Testament. 
But the only force that can solve problems to-day 
is that of love. Love is New Testament, and in- 
stead of equity and justice and condemnation and 
indemnity, and the like, there is sacrifice, 

"Barbarian — might. 

"Judaic — ^justice and right, condemnation, pun- 
ishment. 

"Christian — love, sacrifice, understanding, joy 
in diversity, forgiveness. 

"But it is almost impossible for an organised 
body to regulate life in the Christian spirit. The 
fact of organisation drives Christian men and 
women back upon the seemingly more practical and 
simple basis of right and law and justice. That 
basis, however, has proved a failure and is an 
anachronism, as the uneasy Pope himself probably 
knows. Probably in his heart his passion is to 
reconcile the world through love, but backward 
humanity drags him back to 'right.' " 

"The Socialists are full of faith, however," I 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 117 

urge. "They are in full cry to save the world by 
a system of social justice," 

"That will visibly fail," says Dushan. "The 
world can only be saved and made at one by social 
sacrifice." 

"You do not think we are in a hopeless minority 
nursing this thought?" 

"A minority, perhaps, but not hopeless. There 
are many moving, the whole world is moving, with 
Popes and priests and organisations and myriad- 
hearted humanity. Christ said that he who was not 
against Him was for Him. It is now nearly two 
thousand years later. Now He would say. He who 
is for Me is for Me, and he who is against Me will 
be for Me. Certain things have come to pass in 
two thousand years." 

So Dushan and I, wandering among magistrates, 
preachers, and teachers seek those who are clearly 
"for" and have the new faith. And nowadays 
every one has become a magistrate and mounts the 
bench to pass judgment. But among magistrates 
as among teachers we find also the beginnings of 
the Kingdom which our faith bids us seek, and 
begin to find the unseen walls of the true Church. 



118 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

And what we apply to human society around us 
we apply also to Europe at large and to the world. 
The nations are a school hitherto run on old-fash- 
ioned lines with endless condemnation and bitter- 
ness and strife and little learning. Now Europe 
itself might be a sort of Montessori school where 
the nations are the children. If that is too childish 
a conception, remember the Christ's saying about 
children — of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. A 
happy Europe would still be far from being the 
Kingdom, but it must be young Europe, unfinished 
Europe, Europe learning still, Europe on the way, 
not conceited, self-satisfied Europe, Europe enough 
unto itself. Yes, Europe as a perfect Montessori 
school — that is the inwardness of the League of 
Nations idea. Not a league to enforce peace, 
which is an illiberal idea, but a league to allow 
freedom and self-realisation and immunity from 
the condemnation of neighbours. 

I am present at a meeting of professors and 
philosophers discussing social reconstruction after 
the War. All manner of precautions against war 
breaking out afresh are suggested, and it is curious 
that the whole solemn discussion gives way at the 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 119 

end to a plea for better manners and a spirit of 
mutual tolerance and kindness. The best way to 
avert war is by understanding foreign nations and 
allowing their right to exist and develop to the self- 
realisation of man and the glory of God the Creator. 
The man who makes this plea has the faith of the 
new era, of the coming of the Kingdom. 

We search among publicists and politicians for 
those who have this spirit of mutual tolerance and 
kindness, who do not cry, "God punish Germany, 
God punish England," and the like; for those who 
love any particular other race, who understand and 
can interpret, for those who write about foreign 
peoples positively, who are not ready to turn a 
penny by appealing to the traditional distrust of 
the foreigner but who can see and will tell of the 
bright though different life of the foreigner. And 
we find more than are expected by those who are 
pessimists regarding humanity — lovers of France, 
Russia, Italy, Germany, Bulgaria, America, Japan, 
China, Turkey. . . . 

We seek also those who are ready to erase the 
colour bar. White man must love and understand 
black man, yellow man. Americans learn to be 



120 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

good Europeans and not merely Americans when 
they rejoin Britain in her struggle. But America 
comes laden with the sadness of the plight of the 
black man, her ten millions of liberated slaves, 
many of whom will also have shed their blood and 
mingled it in death with the blood of whites for the 
same cause. She comes laden also with enmity 
toward the yellow man, and is predisposed to settle 
a dispute with Japan by the same anachronistic 
force of arms and appeal for justice and right. 
She will not readily give to Japan over and above 
what Japan wants in the West, and so win more 
goodwill in the grand commonwealth of humanity. 
But if America comes thus encumbered, we come 
to her not less so. We English have India on our 
conscience and the denial of the brotherhood of the 
most wonderful peoples of the East. India has 
mingled her blood with ours also on the field of 
death for the same ideals; it is for us to meet her 
now with love and sacrifice and the convincing 
reality of our religion. And in Africa it must no 
longer be possible to reproach us as King Cete- 
wayo said: "First come missionary, then come 
rum, then come trader, then come soldiers" — ^nor 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 121 

for the soldier to yearn to be shipped east of Suez 
that he may raise a thirst for sin. 

Our civilising mission ought to have been to 
have won the coloured peoples, not to find means 
of basely using them or of enslaving them. 

Russia brings the burden of the hate of the 
Jews. The Jews must be won also to Christ, as 
indeed we confidently know they will be won in 
time. There are still great numbers not of Jewish 
nationality who are Judaic in their religion, even 
whilst calling themselves Christian. They must all 
be won to Christ. Our Christian example is too 
faint. We meet the Jews on their own ground of 
law and right instead of in the spirit of sacrifice 
and love. In any case we must tolerate their Juda- 
ism and Jewish ways, and know and expect that as 
Christ arose from them two thousand years ago, so 
Christians can and must spring from them now and 
hereafter. 

It was Christ who discovered for us that there 
was only one law — love — and that all other true 
laws, though seen as separate, were part of one and 
the same law. In science a similar discovery was 
made by the Russian Mendeleelf, namely, that there 



122 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

was only one substance, and that all the elements, 
so definite in their separateness, were aspects of one 
and the same substance, that all the elements in 
Nature are related to one another in a grand design, 
and that put into that relationship in that design 
they make a unity. All the marvellous individ- 
uality of the elements can be accommodated in a 
higher collective unity. And that unity, when real- 
ised, covers all the diversity of the elements. 

The time has come for the elements of humanity 
to realise the same. In a few living it is realised. 
Two things are needed: a love of the diversity and 
an understanding of the unity. 

The excitement of the chemist in allocating the 
places of the elements in the one circle of the com- 
mon substance may be imagined, the thrill with 
which true neighbours were understood as adjacent 
colours in the spectrum, the greater thrill caused by 
the blanks left by the ignorance of certain elements 
not yet discovered. The thrill of the seer is not 
less in gazing at the spectrum of humanity. To 
realise that the truism. It takes all sorts to make 
a world, is really true! That it takes all sorts not 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 123 

merely here and now but about the eternal throne 
of God! 

The idea of the last judgment as a roll-call goes, 
and we see instead a humanity all diverse and yet 
one before God. The shepherd who leaves the 
ninety-nine in the fold and goes out into the wilder- 
ness to seek the lost one is like the scientist seeking 
the undiscovered metal of the spectrum. Some 
very insignificant non-useful element is needed, and 
there is no complete peace or harmony till it be 
found. Every individuality is precious "in the 
vast and perfect plan," every minority counts. 
The word "judgment" is probably wrong. The 
finale of man's existence cannot be a judgment. 
On the other hand, can it be merely a gloria, a pro- 
longed, indefinite, but infinitely sincere alleluia? 
The human mind stops short, recognising its own 
incapacity. We are blind and deaf and dumb as 
to the significance of the grand finale of history. 

But the thought comes to me that that finale, 
whether it be Last Judgment or an ultimate gloria 
on the lips of all mankind, is not something afar 
off in time. It is something happening now — and 



124 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

it always has been happening, always will be hap- 
pening, all the time. 

The spectrum of light shows an infinite blending 
of tints, polarised for our eyes in the seven primary 
colours, and there is a vision of Creation as just 
such a spectrum — the rainbow which comes about 
when the creative light of God's being shines 
through the one substance. 

The spectrum of humanity, as the recording 
angel beholds it, shows an infinite blending of indi- 
viduals polarised possibly for angelic as well as 
human eyes in races and nations, and as we all 
whirl before God we become the whiteness of the 
Church. 

What then of space and time? 

Has not infinite space, as we weakly call it, a 
spectrum which is an infinite series of places polar- 
ised in worlds and universes? 

And time? Eternity? 

The spectrum of eternity is the infinite blend- 
ing of times which we understand as hours, days, 
eras, just as the spectrum of immortality must be 
our mortality, and of the infinite mind our minds, 
and of the Father's love our love. 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 125 

Time is not a straight line or a river; it is a 
sphere and God is at the centre. He looks at past, 
present, and future at will. And mankind, as it 
was in error thinking the world flat, has been simi- 
larly in error thinking of time as something which 
is going on, some infinite straight line or river. 

The whole Kingdom, in all its aspects, is chang- 
ing, changing, blending, blending. There is move- 
ment encircling and involving lesser movement; 
there are greater movements still and greater, and 
that which is greater understands that which is less, 
but that which is less only vaguely apprehends that 
which is greater; greater and ever greater move- 
ments, diverse in plane and in direction. And yet 
I suppose the sum of all is absolute and motionless 
stability. God is at the centre in the Eternal Now, 
and as it were looks in the mirror, seeing I-am-that- 
I-am. That is the last judgment for ever going on. 

"That is the greatest vision," says Dushan. "If 
we could see it all and see it clearly, and if we 
could all see it all the time, a universal conscious- 
ness of the highest would be realised. You do not 
see it clearly, I do not see it clearly. No individ- 



126 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

ual or group can see it clearly or understand in 
fulness what it means. But perhaps all humanity 
reconciled and at one could see. The Argus-eyed 
body politic of all who are alive or dead could 
realise it." 

"But where in all this is Christ? Where is the 
face that I seek?" I ask. 

"Christ sees," he replies. 

"I am losing sight of Christ. He is becoming 
too theoretical," say I. 

"He is not theoretical," says Dushan. "He is 
the ideal side of our personality, of all men's per- 
sonality. And that is the greatest reality of our 
life." 

"It is real," say I. "But is that ideal side of 
you and me the same which sees the last judgment 
for ever going? Is he the Argus-eyed of whom you 
spoke?" 

"The same." 

"Who then was Jesus Christ who walked in Pal- 
estine, the actual historical figure?" 

"He was the ideal side of our personality." 

"If so, we have made a historical reality into an 
abstraction," 



I THE FACE OF CHRIST 127 

"Not in the least. All humanity is one physi- 
cally, we are all out of Adam and Eve. All hu- 
manity, though less obviously, is also spiritually 
one. In all of us the physical side predominates 
and the spiritual is hidden. But Jesus Christ was 
the redeeming case. In Him the hidden side of 
our common spirituality was focussed. As a histo- 
rical figure He was at the centre of the racial proc- 
ess. He was at the heart of corporate humanity, 
and in Him we see reflected our ideal personality. 
He reflects the ideal personality of all mankind 
visibly on the earth. From all points of the hidden 
and mysterious background of mankind lines were 
drawn to one point and the resultant came through 
to our material plane in Him. In Him the whole 
of our spiritual side blossomed and took features 
and form. No, no theory, I assure you: actual 
fact. That is how it was possible to say that as in 
Adam all die, so in Christ should all be made alive; 
when He appears we shall be like Him; I am the 
Vine, ye are the branches. ... I am the Door, 
by Me if any man enter in he shall be saved. 

"Through Christ is the way to the spiritual unity 
which is at the background of us all. When you 



128 THE QUEST OF THE FACE I 

realise that, then if you will you can exchange 
bodies and become me, or your neighbour in the 
street, or any one at will. You can exchange per- 
sonality and being at will, and go in and out among 
humanity." 

"The dead as well as the living?" 

"Yes, certainly." 

"And those who will be bom." 

"They are already alive in us. You can go 
backward or forward in time. So you become one 
with Christ and have the Face you seek for, you 
become the changing one yourself and the redeemer. 
Whenever you understand a fellow-man you redeem 
him. And you cannot understand him fully with- 
out understanding all." 



THE IMMORTAL 



Christ is the whole significance of our mortality. Were we 
not mortals we should not have Christ. If we did not die we 
should all remain separate individualities, persistent and selfish. 
But because we all die we can understand our unity — our being 
one flesh and one spirit. We can love. It is the look of mortality 
in the eyes that beckons to us to love one another. The immortals 
have clear, hard eyes and they cannot be loved. Their faces 
would be terrible to us if we could look upon them. Yet how 
men cling to the length of this life and see an absolute evil in 
mortality! To seek to be perpetuated as ive are is the opposite 
of seeking Christ. He lives the best who is always ready to die. 



II 

THE IMMORTAL 

There are possibly several mortals living, several 
men who though they were born thousands of years 
ago have never died. Not that their immortality 
is more real than ours. It is different, that is all. 
We pass through the gate of death, pass perhaps 
often through death on our long way. They sim- 
ply never die. By now probably they have become 
invisible to ordinary human gaze, completely trans- 
parent, translucent, and it is in vain that pilgrims 
having the clue to their existence still seek them on 
the remote peaks of Hindu Kush. I have the story 
of Celeus, or Cilf a as he was called by another gen- 
eration, who discovered the infinitely rare drug 
which alters the psychic state and liberates the par- 
tial human soul from the chain of death. 

Cilfa obtained the secret from his aged father, 
who, as a result of a life-long task, had discovered 
the element of the elixir and also means of obtain- 

131 



132 THE QUEST OF THE FACE H 

ing the rarefied magnetic force without the applica- 
tion of which the drug is useless. Cilfa's father, 
the old sorcerer, was afraid of being perpetuated 
as a half -blind tottering hunchback with one foot 
eternally in the grave, and perhaps experience had 
given him strange wisdom. He bequeathed the 
elixir to his son, bidding him think well before he 
applied it. There was only enough for one person, 
and possibly the whole world did not contain suf- 
ficient to make a second dose. So the aged father 
bade him imagine his loneliness, the danger of 
humanity finding him out and imprisoning him 
from generation to generation, perhaps for ever. 

But Cilfa had no doubts. It appealed to him 
as the most wonderful adventure — to live for ever. 
Once he had been under sentence of death and had 
stood bound in front of an executioner, and he 
knew what it was to face parting with sweet life, 
the anguish of it. And then when reprieve had 
come he had remembered that all the same a day 
of death had to come to him sometime. So he 
accepted the elixir. Only he determined to keep 
it a secret; the rest of humanity must not know. 



II THE IMMORTAL 133 

For if they did a great deal of the zest would be 
gone. He would become the richest and wisest 
man in the world. No one should know his age. 
But when the records showed him inconveniently 
old he would go to another clime with a great 
amount of wealth and start again as a nobody. 
And so on — for an eternity in a straight line. It 
was maddeningly thrilling. 

Lest he should lose his mental balance in his 
excitement, he decided to take the potion at once. 
He did so. But not a moment too soon. For as 
he held the fatal glass distraction was already in 
his eyes, his brain reeled, and his hand went to and 
fro like a branch in the wind. Even his lips re- 
fused at first to open, and when he by luck, as it 
were, got the vessel to his mouth and drank the few 
drops, he bit and broke the glass. But then at 
once a great relief: 'twas done, 'twas not missed, 
he was immortal, he would never die. He lay 
down at once and slept. 

When Cilfa awoke, he at once remembered that 
he had taken the elixir, but he had an uneasy 
feeling that he had slept a thousand years, the light 



134 THE QUEST OF THE FACE H 

about him seemed new and everything seemed to 
have altered. It was with a great deal of relief 
that he realised that he could not have been asleep 
more than an hour and that he had lost very little 
of eternity. His father's funeral was going past 
and he heard the wailing of those people he had 
paid to mourn. It was the same world as a mo- 
ment before: the only difference was he had become 
immortal. 

So he sat down and began to think of life. He 
thought of his grudges and was consumed with 
mirth at the thought of his secret superiority to his 
enemies. He thought of a certain man who had 
him in his power, Balbo, whom he had feared for 
ten years. He thought of many pleasant acquaint- 
ances and their friendly rivalry, and he thought of 
a woman whose favour he had been mad to have — 
of whose true lover he had been mortally jealous, 
but he did not think long of them. 

"Was my father right?" he asked himself. 
"Was he right in thinking he would have been per- 
petuated in the form of an old man? Would he 
not have returned to his prime?" 

Gilfa considered himself. Nothing seemed to 



II THE IMMORTAL 135 

have changed. He was forty. It was rather stag- 
gering to think that at forty thousand he would look 
the same — a little grey, a little tired about the 
eyes, pallid, weak at the knees and rather easily 
tired. 

Whether it was the draught of immortality or 
the nervous stimulus of a new idea, Cilfa felt less 
predisposed to tiredness, felt in fact a certain alac- 
rity and energy in his body. He decided to visit 
Yooxa, though he did not want her so much now 
that he was immortal. 

"In order to love a woman well, one ought to 
remain eternally at twenty-five," Cilfa reflected. 
"A woman never forgives a man being less than 
his prime." 

But he was in no way mortified by the thought. 
He walked along the Olive way to the familiar do- 
main associated with so many heartburnings. And 
the little olive leaves were dropping yellow and 
red. All Nature was turning towards death, and 
though Cilfa had little poetry in his soul, it touched 
him now to think that everything else went in- 
exorably on toward death but he remained change- 
less. 



136 THE QUEST OF THE FACE H 

He took to Yooxa a gold ornament, a gift she 
had already scornfully refused, and he brought it 
again. 

He came to her bower and she bade him wait. 
Her true lover held her in his arms and she told 
him who it was had come. And they laughed to- 
gether and let him wait. "Let him wait," said 
Yooxa. 

So Cilfa waited. For, as he reflected, he had 
plenty of time. He waited so patiently that at 
last Yooxa was enraged. She flung out to him in 
a fury, and, seizing the proff'ered ornament from 
his hand, dashed it on his brow. 

Cilfa felt no pain. It was as if a leaf had struck 
him. And he did not care for Yooxa. 

He stood facing her, smiling, and asked gently 
when she would have leisure. 

And Yooxa, in astonishment, fled within. Cilfa 
had never treated her in this way before. 

He went now toward the city and the merchants. 
He had decided to give up his old life of hunt- 
ing and farming and to become a man of gold. He 
decided to sell his patrimony and open money- 
changing tables. With money-changing as a 



II THE IMMORTAL 137 

foundation he would become a secret moneylender, 
first on a small scale, and later on a large scale. 
His wealth would become fabulous but his actual 
resources he would keep secret, and certainly in 
course of time they must be even greater than any 
silly fable or legend would suggest. He would 
buy men; some female slaves, some military cap- 
tives. But that would be awkward: he could not 
have thousands of slaves. Such property would 
be too obvious and cumbrous. He would buy the 
opinions and actions of important men. The 
Grand Vizier would need perhaps ten thousand 
pieces of gold to change his opinion when the Sul- 
tan consulted him. He had better become Vizier 
himself in time. And then Sultan. 

With this in view he bought a little kiosk for 
changing money, and the alien foreigners who sat 
at the other tables laughed among themselves to see 
a hunter and farmer think of breaking in upon their 
business. 

It was now six hours since Cilfa had taken the 
elixir, and as he thought he ought to feel hungry he 
repaired to a tavern and ordered a large meal. 
When it appeared he ate a very little and felt com- 



138 THE QUEST OF THE FACE H 

pletely sated, could not touch anything more. 

So he turned once more into the city and chose 
the house he would live in in fifty years' time, and 
then a much larger for a hundred years. "I shall 
be one hundred and forty years old but may per- 
haps pretend to be eighty and wear a grey wig," 
thought he to himself. "At one hundred and forty 
I ought to be rich enough to be buying large souls. 
But probably I had better not begin in this city. 
I ought to arrange for my death and disappearance, 
and then appear in another city without wig and 
with a new name and a very considerable quantity 
of gold." 

He began to think out the luxury of the house 
that he would buy fifty years hence, its silks and 
carpets, its beds and canopies, the elegance of his 
servants, the beauty of his wives. Then a mali- 
cious thought seized him — the idea of buying 
Yooxa. With untold wealth he could no doubt 
contrive to get any woman into his power. The 
problem of buying Yooxa would be comparatively 
simple if he had enough money. But of course in 
fifty years she would be sixty-seven. So that was 
really out of the question, and he did not care for 



II THE IMMORTAL 139 

her much now as it was. Having immortality, how 
could he possibly concern himself long with the 
grace of a puny, wasting girl! 

His steps now bore him to the district of the 
scholars and disputers, where was always endless 
wrangling over ideas. Never had Gilfa dreamed 
of taking a part there. Hunter and farmer were 
too stupid occupations to qualify him to say a word 
in this arena. But he was tickled now with the 
idea that he could silence every one of them, if 
not in one moment, at least in course of time. So 
he went up to a noisy throng and interrupted the 
disputers, and claimed to say his word. 

One in the crowd recognised Cilfa and told the 
others it was a farmer, and with much mirth they 
let him climb to the speaker's eminence to make a 
speech. All expected a long and monstrously fool- 
ish speech, and were ready to pull him down or 
pull the boards from under him when he exceeded 
their patience. 

Cilfa stood in front of them like a statue and 
said not a word. 

The disputers became silent, and then violently 
impatient, 



140 THE QUEST OF THE FACE II 

"Time is precious to them," thought Cilfa mali- 
ciously. 

"Pull the fool down," said some one. And 
then Cilfa raised his hand and, smiling, gently ut- 
tered his speech- — only four words — and then 
bowed solemnly and descended. 

"All men are fools," said Cilfa, and bowed, and 
that was all. 

There was silence for a moment, and it almost 
seemed as if the hunter had made an impression. 
But some one suddenly whispered the joke, "He 
knows, he knows," and every one laughed at him. 

But Cilfa reflected to himself, I shall come back 
regularly and say it for the next hundred years. 
By then my victory will have come. 

"It would be good to become wise," thought 
Cilfa. "I am too stupid to become so in an ordi- 
nary lifetime, but I'm young enough in eternity to 
begin. I ought to learn all there is to know. I 
could learn every important book by heart. Mor- 
tal humanity throughout all time might be my 
slaves, working just for me." 

And he returned to his home to rest, did so 
mechanically from long habit, just because the hour 



II THE IMMORTAL 141 

was late. But he had no need to rest, and though 
he lay down to sleep he only slept half an hour. 
The next night following he only slept a quarter of 
an hour. The night following that, seven minutes 
and thirty seconds or thereabouts. On the eighth 
night he slept twelve seconds, and a week later still 
all the sleep he needed was one-tenth of a second. 
So there was no doubt about it, the elixir had be- 
gun to work in some way and was likely to be genu- 
ine. Cilfa had infinite faith in his old father's 
research and never doubted his immortality. 

What happened with regard to his sleep found a 
counterpart in his appetite. It rapidly decreased, 
and it was soon evident that he had extremely lit- 
tle need of food. He did not get tired and he did 
not get hungry. He did not suffer from indiges- 
tion or liver, and was indeed aware of a steady con- 
stitutional change for the better. 

He sold his farm and his estate and became a 
townsman. The swarthy aliens who did the money 
business did not laugh at him long, for he was 
remarkably successful as a money-changer. He 
was unusually sharp and perspicacious, and de- 
veloped what is called a firm upper lip and a strong 



142 THE QUEST OF THE FACE H 

chin. He had a growing hard contempt for his 
fellow-beings, and brow-beat them in all transac- 
tions with them. Whenever he met a man, even 
were he the cunningest or hardest of the town, Gilfa 
would be the harder, and the other would be con- 
scious of a sort of ineffectiveness, a furtiveness, an 
inability to look facts in the face. But Cilfa would 
say what he meant and intended forthwith, and 
would win. 

Cilfa's old friends of the hunt looked a little 
askance at him, but he had many new friends who 
flattered and wondered, and stood by to be helped 
by him. 

And Yooxa, who had despised him, came round 
in her views, and he did not need to compass the 
possession of her by bribery. She came to him, 
and after some little show of playfulness came into 
his household and was his wife. Cilfa doubtless 
had become finer in appearance as a result of his 
perfect health, and when Yooxa came to him he be- 
gan to consider his personal appearance, which had 
certainly changed. His brow, which had been 
lined and not very good in tint, fleshy in parts, grey 
in parts, was now smooth and white and massive. 



II THE IMMORTAL 143 

the brow of a man against whom it would be diffi- 
cult to prevail. His eyes were larger and clearer; 
his lips tended to be set as if carved; his body was a 
little sparer and more supple. The grey hairs 
from his head were disappearing, and the only 
change that went against his appearance was a sort 
of moulting of his moustache and beard — these 
seemed to become thinner every day. 

Yooxa came in, and he had the same triumph 
over her that he had daily over the poor mortal 
money-grubbers of the market who strove against 
him. He had her furnished fittingly with a boudoir 
of all softness and luxury, and put slaves at her 
disposal; slaves also to watch her, for he intended 
to keep her his prisoner, even though she might 
tire of him and wish to run away. He would have 
been content to share immortality with her in or- 
der to keep her eternally prisoner, though he had 
no manner of love for her. 

He could not eat with her for the good reason 
he had practically ceased eating, and though he 
could share her couch he could never sleep with 
her, must remain sleepless at her side. Neither 
could he have much interest in her doubts and 



144 THE QUEST OF THE FACE H 

frets and anxieties and piques, for he would live 
for ever, and in the light of immortality such things 
were absurd. 

He came to Yooxa on his first nuptial night 
with this thought in his heart: "I have outlived 
your scorn"; and his second thought was more 
malicious and even cruel. It might be put in these 
words: "An immortal is coming to you and will 
ruin you." 

The question might be asked, and it did present 
itself to his mind: "What sort of a child would an 
immortal beget in a mortal woman?" The ques- 
tion gave him pause, for he might beget a trouble- 
some son who would rival him in immortality, and 
then perhaps a daughter, and lay the foundation 
of a whole race of immortals which would rob him 
of his isolated glory. But the cruel thought alone 
remained in power that in bearing such a child the 
mortal woman must be broken. His revenge in 
marriage would be his secret, terrible personality. 

And when with this thought he came into the 
presence of Yooxa she was smitten by a terror of 
him, as is a little bird when the eyes of the eagle 
are upon it. And the great strong Cilfa, with his 



II THE IMMORTAL 145 

infinite reserve and resource, bent his eyes upon 
his little white prey, and as he came toward her 
he thought interiorly: Behold how eternity will 
revenge itself on time. Then he stopped. 

'Tis true one speck of lust remained in him, 
one speck, that is all. And now for the first time 
a sort of horror possessed his mind. For he had 
not realised till that moment that as his need for 
sleep and food had passed, so also had passed the 
third great human appetite, the desire and need 
of the flesh. His attitude toward Yooxa was only 
an intellectual thirst for revenge, and in his idea of 
possessing her he had only been pursuing mechan- 
ically the course of thought which had been his 
before taking the elixir. 

So Cilfa left the bridal chamber and resolved 
to give himself the more to the greater task of 
grasping human power. 

Weeks and months passed, and he grew rich so 
rapidly that he would have been able to enjoy great 
wealth even in his normal lifetime had he remained 
an ordinary mortal. But it must be remembered 
that without the hard faith which a sense of im- 
mortality gave him it is unlikely that he would 



146 THE QUEST OF THE FACE H 

have done so well. He began to have it in his 
power to affect the course of State affairs, and was 
able to make a beginning at purchasing the words 
and actions of politicians. His zest for money- 
making palled a little, but the buying of souls flat- 
tered a boundless intellectual pride which had 
grown up in him. He gloated on the spectacle of 
the most powerful and wisest of mortals trans- 
formed into puppets which he worked on hidden 
wires. 

He had become a sufficiently remarkable man 
by now, and it needed all his care to keep in the 
background. It was always said, and with per- 
fect truth, that he hated publicity, and even when 
he heard his age understated by twenty years it 
caused him some mental anxiety. For it was not 
well that his age should be considered at all. 

One day he absolutely checkmated a scheme of 
a clever young nobleman of about eighteen years. 
The latter was exceedingly mortified, but looked at 
him and smiled: 

"I have plenty of time in front of me," he said. 
"My turn will come." 

And on the anniversary of that day the young 



II THE IMMORTAL 147 

man sent him a token with the repeated words, 
"My turn will come," and went on doing that each 
year with annoying regularity. 

Cilfa, however, showed no sign of age. The 
hair on his head was short and black, and though 
it never grew it did not fall out. The nails on his 
hands did not grow. His forehead had become 
somewhat dome-shaped. His eyes were large and 
blank, and from the lower eyelids and the cheek- 
bones the skin was pure and strong. His beard 
and moustache had completely fallen away. His 
lips and teeth and tongue had modified, as their 
need was only to aid speech. His ears were de- 
cidedly finer. His body was changed in tone, for 
everything gross had departed from it. On his 
chest breasts had grown, but they were rather the 
breasts of Athene than of Aphrodite, and were mar- 
vellously pure, rising in a sweeping curve to the 
proud column of his neck. But his belly was 
curved inward and his thighs and legs seemed 
somewhat rudimentary. 

For twenty years he sweated something out of 
his system every day. If he lay on a bed for a 
few hours, a reddish grey deposit could be collected 



148 THE QUEST OF THE FACE II 

from the sheets. Something was continually drop- 
ping away from him, and that was no doubt the 
substance of our mortality. 

At last he was forced to become a recluse, and 
wear a grey wig, and walk with a stick in order to 
keep his secret of immortality, and he constantly 
hoped for the death of the young man (now middle 
aged) who sent him the annoying message that his 
turn would come. For the young man had also 
done well in life, was well married, and had real 
power. So Cilfa, who could well afford to await 
his death, did wait; but though mortals must die, 
they sometimes take an unconscionable long time 
about it. 

Indeed when he was one hundred and ten Cilfa 
was obliged to quit the field. He hid 200,000 
pieces of gold in a distant though accessible cave, 
and, casting aside his wig and his stick, he dis- 
guised himself as a youth starting out on life with 
a small bundle on his back to seek his fortune. 

And in this way he passed out of his Sultan's 
dominions into the dominion of an alien Sultan 
whose capital was fifty days' journey from the 
capital of the other. And there he determined to 



II THE IMMORTAL 149 

have war waged on his native land, and if possible 
to get his enemy into his power. 

He arrayed himself fittingly, and brought in the 
great treasure, and established himself as a prince 
of foreign lineage; indeed he made such a show 
that the Sultan was ready to see him married into 
his household, and he pressed a princess upon him 
for a wife, though, as may be imagined, after 
Yooxa, Cilfa wanted no more experience of mar- 
ried happiness. 

Hardly, however, were the nuptials solemnised 
before he had managed to stir up cause for strife 
with his old country. And he went out with hosts 
to fight, determining with all the power of his im- 
mortality to take his enemy prisoner, and to look 
him in the face on the next anniversary and ask 
him maliciously did he think his turn would ever 
come. 

But Cilfa greatly miscalculated the chances of 
the day. His old country won, and instead of his 
capturing his enemy he was slain by him — slain, 
but not killed. 

In this wise: he sought him out in the field, and 
though he had little skill of arms, he reckoned 



150 THE QUEST OF THE FACE H 

that as he could not be killed he would also be in- 
vulnerable and must win. He received several 
cuts from lesser foes, but even the deepest seemed 
to turn to scratches and gave him no pain. So he 
engaged to face the brilliant warrior who had 
thwarted him so long, and in order to terrify him 
he called out to him in familiar language, "Your 
turn at last," and let him know who he was. But 
his enemy struck at him valiantly, and with his 
whirling strokes deprived Cilfa of both arms. The 
immortal thus stood helpless, his arms lying on the 
field of battle. He felt no pain, but he felt a 
great deal of surprise and some anxiety. His 
enemy had fetters put on his feet, transferred him 
to a great train of slaves, and then continued the 
battle. 

Then Cilfa's shoulders began to ache, and for 
three hours gave him unpleasant growing-pains. 
Night came, and the pains were transferred to his 
elbows, and then along his forearms to his wrists, 
and then to his fingers. He put forth his limbs, 
they were entire. The arms had grown on again. 
And he undid his fetters and escaped. 

He escaped completely from the battle, and did 



II THE IMMORTAL 151 

not return to the Sultan and his new bride, but, 
seriously disillusioned, began to wander aimlessly 
as a poor man and muse on life. Money and 
power were a failure, sensual delights were not for 
him, revenge was neither satisfying nor certain. 
Although he was immortal there were dangers. 
He might be captured and tortured. He would not 
feel the torture, but continual growing-pains would 
be trying. He might be burned at the stake if 
he fell into his enemy's hands. 

Cilfa made a fire and put his hand in it to see 
what the effect would be. He would not bum. 
The heat was not pleasant, but his body had now 
become indestructible by fire. Undoubtedly his 
father had been right in his forecast of danger. 
If humanity found out his secret he would be 
simply imprisoned for life, and orders would be 
given from generation to generation that he was a 
human monster and must be carefully guarded. 
He might thus be sealed up for a thousand years. 
It would not be long but it would be tedious. He 
would be like the genie in the fisherman's haul of 
lead, and the genie was sufficiently athirst to be 
free from his imprisonment. 



152 THE QUEST OF THE FACE II 

He decided to live an ordinary life for a while, 
and be as human as possible, and be taken for an 
ordinary fellow-human. "One never knows whom 
one jostles in the street," he once heard a man say. 
"Quite true," he thought, "it is amusing that it 
never occurs to any man I meet that he is talking 
to an immortal." 

But life was unspeakably dull. None of the 
ordinary occupations taken so seriously by him- 
self in the past appeared as more than a game, and 
a tedious game at that. Even learning and wisdom 
failed to be worth while, since all the learning and 
wisdom in the world could not be put into the scale 
against his immortality. He no longer envied any 
one any kind of success. What he did envy was 
the power to be interested and get excited, the 
power not to despise ordinary human interest. "I 
believe I would cut down my immortality to 10,000 
years," he said, "if only I could be simply human 
all the time." A vain thought. There were even 
times when he doubted the practical wisdom of hav- 
ing taken the elixir. He now mingled more and 
more with humanity, preferring a gregarious life 
to his former seclusion, and pretended to be inter- 



II THE IMMORTAL 153 

ested in the world and the flesh. It was his lot to 
live with a man who committed suicide, a student 
who banished Hamlet's doubts from his mind, de- 
ciding that "not to be" was better than "to be." 
The student put down the half -finished glass of 
poison and died. And Cilfa came and looked at 
him and at the glass. The event reminded him 
mournfully of the day when he took the elixir. He 
picked up the glass of poison and tasted it, but it 
made no more impression on him than a drop of 
water falling on his head. He would fain have 
followed the student and been "quit of it all." 

Cilfa had always been a materialist. The old 
sorcerer, his father, had not believed in gods, and 
Cilfa had been brought up without religion. His 
temperament was such that he thrived on godless- 
ness. And in the wisdom gained by three life- 
times' experience he had come to associate all gods 
and religiousness and prayers with mortality, it 
was all part of being doomed to die. If he could 
get on without gods as a mortal, certainly he found 
no need of them as an immortal. Indeed, one of 
the dangers inherent in the eternity of his immor- 
tality was that some day some tribe would discover 



154 THE QUEST OF THE FACE H 

his secret and force him to be their god. And he 
realised it was in his power to be a far more satis- 
factory god than most of the gods which men in 
one part or another of the world professed. The 
only god that he found as great as himself was the 
God of the Israelites. And once he addressed him- 
self to the blank heavens in these words: "If You 
exist, then You and I are immortal. Come out of 
the sky and let us embrace." But no answer came, 
and he concluded that if such a God existed He 
might be greater than he, might be, in fact, omnipo- 
tent. And he considered the subject of God with 
his intellect, which had now grown to be very 
mighty. He even framed a set of words as a 
prayer to his God, a reasonable prayer, a prayer 
which had none of the character of human prayer, 
none of the feeling, the anguish. 

But Cilfa prayed in his way, which was a just 
way according to many standards. He prayed 
at last that his immortality might be taken away 
and he might have the grace to die. He went up 
into the mountains, and kneeled, and struck his 
mighty brow on the rocks, and with all the might 
of his intellect and will he said to God, "Decree my 



II THE IMMORTAL 155 

death." He said it once — it was the most terrible 
moment of his life. 

But Cilfa did not realise that he was not com- 
pletely enfranchised yet. He was still dropping 
mortality from him, still changing. Every cell of 
his flesh was being created anew of a new sub- 
stance, his organs were all slowly modifying, and 
his psychism was purging itself still under the in- 
fluence of the elixir and striving to affirm the ab- 
solute. His prayer was part of the sickness of a 
perpetual moult. He arose from the rocks purer, 
harder, more terrible, less compromised than ever. 
His mind grew stronger. It was difficult for him 
to explain how it was he had been so strongly in- 
terested in power at one time. But now his in- 
terests grew more rarefied if more certain. The 
desire to be among humanity began to recede, and 
with it all human care whatsoever. His face be- 
came so preoccupied that there was some danger of 
his being thought possessed of a devil and put in 
durance. But his wanderings were not among 
men. He went into the wilderness, crossed the 
most desolate mountain ranges, walked all day, 
all night, in whirling snowstorms, never experienc- 



156 THE QUEST OF THE FACE II 

ing any tiredness, or pain of cold or heat, or any 
hunger. He went to the Pole; he went to the 
Equator. He was indeed 

imprison 'd in the viewless winds, 
And blown with restless violence round about 
This pendent world. 

He went to the heart of the great African desert 
and was buried in the sand and struggled out 
again; he went to the bottom of the sea and along 
it and did not drown. He jumped the greatest 
precipices and did not hurt himself; he went into 
the craters of volcanoes and did not bum. All to 
no avail. He tried another dull lifetime among 
men at a lascivious court; he tried another as a 
scholar and a wise man; he wrote books and proved 
the truth that of the writing of them there is no 
end. 

He was already much older than Methuselah 
when we lose sight of him; and that was some 
thousands of years ago, though he must be living 
somewhere, somehow, now. He decided that he 
would muse a thousand years on his fate, sitting 
on the same spot, untroubled by his fellow-men, 
not troubling them. With that in view he went 



II THE IMMORTAL 157 

to India and commenced to climb the Himalayas. 
Of these great mountains he sought the highest and 
most inaccessible, presumably Mount Everest, and 
after indescribable difficulty and effort he got 
through the snow even to the topmost summit. In 
the clear weather he saw that he was at the suprem- 
est height, so he carefully cut a throne in the snow 
and crossed his legs and sat there; and when night 
came he chose a point in the heavens and fixed his 
gaze upon it, and did not depart from that point 
by day. Thus he began to muse for a thousand 
years. 

It is correct to say that not one single ordinary 
human thought traversed his brain. Indeed, there 
is nothing that we can get down into ordinary 
human language unless it is one word, the first and 
the last. 

Cilfa settled himself to think for a millennium. 
He was at perfect ease. He looked at the point de- 
cided upon and he thought with a strange breath, 

The rest is lost, was not audible here. Cilfa 
bending his eyes on one point is therefore lost in 
an eternal "I." He sat there unmoving a lunar 



158 THE QUEST OF THE FACE H 

month, a year, a decade, a century, centuries, and 
all the while he changed toward the absolute. Still 
his body modified itself, and the cells of his flesh, 
and the composition of his soul — just in the same 
way that his intellect slid on to a new plane in- 
comprehensible to us except for the vanishing 
word "I" — so his body became more and more re- 
mote in type, lost its palpability, lost its opaque- 
ness, till at last it became transparent and the sun 
shone through it as through glass — then completely 
invisible. 

At that point I lose sight of him myself. And 
whether he is still at the top of Mount Everest, or 
came down after his thousand years and walks 
again disguised among us, I cannot say. The last 
real thing I report of him is the word "I." For 
us poor mortals the last word would always be We, 
but for the immortal it was /. 



THE CHANGELESS GOD 



Out God is the God of change. It is therefore that mortality 
is sweet and all our living is mortality. An infinite tenderness is 
diffused through the world through the pathos of change. Only 
the changeless is terrible. 



Ill 

THE CHANGELESS GOD 

The sun rose and set, the seasons changed. Flow- 
ers blossomed and faded, children were bom and 
grew. Winds blew, rains fell, colours passed over 
the land. Messages arrived from far away, and 
messages were sent. Men and animals moved to 
and fro upon the earth, obeying and commanding. 
Every night bright stars shone in the sky above 
all clouds and a fair moon rose and swam across 
the heavens. 

There was One greater than all of us, than sun 
and moon and child and flower and wind and rain 
and earth and star. We all depended on one an- 
other, and watched one another like slaves and 
masters, but there was one Over-Master at whose 
will all moved. He was called God. We knew 
no other God. 

Our prayers steamed up to that God; prayers 
that were thoughts, prayers that were songs, pray- 

161 



162 THE QUEST OF THE FACE HI 

ers that were deeds, prayers that were joy. There 
was the sunrise prayer of red and silver, the sunset 
prayer of red and gold, the deep meditation of the 
night. There was the interchange of command, of 
message, of glance, the interchange of smile. The 
breath of power whereby that God kept us together 
in a unity with Him passed through our secret 
veins, and ascended and vivified us all. We had 
our histories of lives and changes; the little things 
had little histories, the sun had its great history, 
and the great God behind us all — He knew. We 
had our notions of time, the sun had its notion of 
time; we counted time from a hypothetical begin- 
ning, and said it was an illusion. For God it was 
no illusion. He knew what the Time was. 

One day the Great One looked down upon the 
beautiful earth, upon a rose garden where a child 
played. It was a slender, delicate girl. She was 
so slender and delicate that her existence height- 
ened the glory of God's grand design. The work- 
ings of the universe were so diverse that they gave 
welcome even to the finest, the strangest, and the rar- 
est. It was joy to the strength of God that it could 
handle and use the subtle shades of being. He lay 



Ill THE CHANGELESS GOD 163 

at length therefore in the morning of His great day 
when our little morning was passing His. The 
sun shone brightly and hotly over the white stone 
walls of the garden. A gentle breeze wandered 
among the rose trees, and the blossoms nodded and 
bowed to one another. The many bees and flies 
buzzed back and forward as if making netting of 
the air. White and brown butterflies flitted to and 
fro, sometimes settling on a flower, sometimes 
alighting on the paths, opening and shutting their 
wings to the sky. Day moths on poised wings 
shot out long tongues into the honeyed depths of 
flowers. Helena, the girl, sat upon a grass plot 
and ran her fingers through her golden hair. She 
sat, thoughtless, looking upon beauty, undisturbed. 
The great Eye was pleased to look down, and 
recognise, though printed small, the messages He 
had long since entrusted to forerunners, to the 
sun and the stars and the winds. He was glad to 
see in what little ways the garden bore His marks 
upon it. There was not a line or an angle or a 
curve that was not a letter of His own writing. The 
lines of the bee's flight in the air, the bend of the 
rose-tree stems, the lines of the form of the girl 



164 THE QUEST OF THE FACE HI 

were the same as He had intended from the first. 
The patterns of their tracery were framed in His 
supernal dwelling. No other God could ever dis- 
pute His claim to His beautiful universe. So He 
looked upon the garden and loved it. And the 
garden looked upon Him and grew more beauti- 
ful. What time that might be in Universal Time 
by which the Gods count, no mortal knows. But 
it was upon a day, and even a day counts in Etern- 
ity. It was the day of the weakness of that God. 

The God became enamoured of the garden, the 
garden became enamoured of the God. The bees 
and flies buzzed more fast, the sun shone more in- 
tensely, the white walls gleamed, the roses trembled 
in the air. The roses became motionless as if 
enchanted. Helena ceased to wave her fingers in 
her tresses. She gazed. The God moved towards 
the garden, and the garden moved towards the God. 
So His Throne was left empty and unguarded. 

The girl gazed into a transcendent beauty; her 
lips parted with wonder which even her being had 
never divined, her cheeks crimsoned, her breast 
moved forward. For the swarm of flies and bees 
had for her lost their distinctive form, and had been 



Ill THE CHANGELESS GOD 165 

inbreathed by some power of Beauty that held them 
as one, as the magical dreadful brows and hair of 
the God; and the enchanted roses had faded to a 
shadowy Face, to which in a moment the sun, shin- 
ing through, added an all-sparkling lustre. The 
girl stood up: the roses had gone; at her breast 
were all the roses. 

Nearer and nearer came the garden to the God, 
and more awful became the garden. Helena rose 
with outstretched arms, with parted lips, with eyes 
too wide, with a breast and soul that gave itself 
away. . . . 

She moved forward and cried and fell . . . 
and then, as it were, she ceased to exist. 

All things for a moment ceased to exist, and 
fell from the grasp of the God. The sun fell out. 
The stars stepped inside the sky, the moon effaced 
itself and disappeared. The earth beneath our 
feet, the garden, the walls and walks and lawn, the 
trees and flies and bees changed to invisible vapour 
and vanished. And Helena herself shrank within 
the compass of her inmost cell, and opened the 
door which is inside of that, and disappeared. 

A moment later all things reappeared and passed 



166 THE QUEST OF THE FACE HI 

back into existence. The sun came back, and un- 
der cover of its light the moon and stars and the 
world returned, and the garden with its walls and 
the girl. But they did not return the same as they 
had been, but rather as if owing a new allegiance, 
as an estate and slaves that had changed masters. 
They had returned at the bidding of a different 
God, at the bidding of a Changeless God, and they 
became bound in an iron obedience beneath His 
throne. 

There was a different world imder the different 
dominion. The sun no longer rose and set, the 
seasons changed not, the blossoms and the chil- 
dren and men remained as they were, and moved 
not, and grew not. No wind blew or rain fell, 
nor passed the colour over the land. No messages 
were received, none sent, but all lay preserved and 
fixed and silent as if modelled in marble. One 
decree, once uttered, held all the worlds together. 
The light of the sun moved not into the earth. It 
was fixed like an unmoving bridge. The prayers 
that went up to God reached Him but were not re- 
ceived. They extended from earth to heaven like 
a bridge, like the frozen gleams of the sun's light. 



Ill THE CHANGELESS GOD 167 

The night meditated not. The lodestone held cap- 
tive, but attracted not. And Helena looked up 
out of eyes that had been widened by strain — 
looked up with ceaseless adoration at the Change- 
less God. The Universe which had changed mas- 
ters was the universe of her soul. 



THE LIGHT 



Out Western civilisation is unconvincing as an expression of 
Christianity. We send our missionaries from London and New 
York to the East to preach Jesus. But if the Eastern is moved 
by the Word and seeks us in our own clamorous homes, how 
great is his disillusion! Jesus is in our midst, but He is difficult 
to find except among the despised and rejected. 



IV 

THE LIGHT 

Each of us has his own particular Kingdom of 
Heaven, for the Word of God grows differently in 
each heart where it is planted. Missionaries and 
broadcast sowers of the seed take little thought of 
this — they reckon on a certain uniformity of ef- 
fect. If the heathen becomes baptized or verbally 
confesses Christ, they are fairly satisfied and pass 
on. It is not theirs to search the earth, and watch 
and note the wonderful ways of God. Perhaps 
they would deny that whenever the idea of Chris- 
tianity actually reached a man's heart he would be 
likely to start up and do something unusual. 

A Turk once received the Word by chance into 
his very heart. The sower was an American Bap- 
tist missionary who, one sultry afternoon, over- 
took the Turk riding with attendants and camels 
to his home settlement just outside a large Turkish 

city. The American hastened to make him a pres- 

171 



172 THE QUEST OF THE FACE IV 

ent of a translation of the Gospel. The Moslem 
received the present with great courtesy according 
to the ways of his nation; and in return, for it is 
considered impolite not to exchange, he gave him 
a present of a little seal. The American then ex- 
plained that he was obeying the command of his 
Master, that he go into all the world and carry 
the Light to those who were in darkness. The Turk 
thought the American very noble; he surmised that 
the religion which would make a man go so many 
miles to present a little book to a stranger on the 
road must be something worth knowing and under- 
standing, perhaps worth embracing even. The 
Turk was not unready to embrace a new religion, 
for he belonged to the New Turkey that turns yearn- 
ingly, if impractically, to the West. 

The American allowed himself to feel a glow of 
pride in his religion and the romance of the mis- 
sion-field. Then he said good-bye, hoped the Turk 
would be brought to the Light, and went on to the 
city. The Turk promised to read the Gospel and 
try and find the Light. 

As soon as the Turk got home he sat down to 
study the little book. It was a translation of the 



IV THE LIGHT 173 

Gospel of St. John, and he read, "In Him was life; 
and the life was the light of men. . . . That was 
the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world," and on through all those wonder- 
ful pages of the most beautiful history in the 
world. 

Not through all. 

Before he was half-way through the Gospel, the 
Turk put down the book and went out of his cham- 
ber, crying, "Where is the man who hath given me 
this wonderful doctrine? Surely he of all men is 
the one it would be well to know and honour." 

They told him that the missionary was by that 
time in the city, and they saddled three swift 
horses, and the Turk with two servants set off to 
bring the American back. They brought the mis- 
sionary to the settlement once more, and to the 
mansion among the shady cypress trees by the side 
of the wide river, and they would have done him 
much honour. 

"Tell me," said the Turk, "do you have the light 
of which the book doth tell?" 

"I have it," said the Baptist. "I carry it into 
distant lands. I have to-day brought it to you." 



174 THE QUEST OF THE FACE IV 

"But do you live according to the beautiful wise 
words I have read? Are there many like you? 
Where do you live?" 

"I am an American. In America we are Chris- 



tians." 



"How far away is America?" 
"Five thousand miles, I guess." 
"And America is founded on the Gospel?" 
"America is the land of freedom. We are the 
refuge of the oppressed of all nations. To us 
come the Jews, the Russians, the Poles, the Ger- 
mans, the Irish. We give them new life. I should 
say if any country is Christian, America is that 
country. As our President Lincoln said, 'We are 
the hope of the world and of all peoples.' " 

The Moslem opened his gentle eyes and be- 
lieved; he loaded the American with honours and 
thanks, and escorted him back once more to the 
city. Then he returned home and sat down in 
earnest to St. John's Gospel and mastered it, or 
rather tried to master it, for that extraordinary 
document has baffled the wisest and most scholarly 
as well as the simplest and most illiterate. The 
Turk learned English, a smattering of the tongue 



IV THE LIGHT 175 

that was spoken by the nation who based their 
worldly life on the Gospel of St. John. He found 
out the cost of a steerage passage. He took all his 
possessions and made them into lots and sold them, 
and sped away, following the setting sun, a-search- 
ing for the light that never was on sea or land. 

His emotions on Columbus' journey may be im- 
agined, his suspense when the ship stood still at 
last off Long Island at the quarantine dock, his 
stilled, homeful bosom expecting in the immediate 
future the vision of the New Jerusalem. When he 
saw the green, sun-glorified statue of Liberty in the 
harbour the tears rolled down his cheeks, and he 
cried out excitedly in his own language, astonish- 
ing the stolid emigrants wedged around him in the 
crush gazing at the statue and New York. 

At Ellis Island, where all the steerage people 
are medically, financially, and inquisitorially ex- 
amined, in the imbroglio of inspection might have 
been heard the following conversation : 

"What is your profession?" 

"What do I profess?" 

"Yes, go on." 

"I profess to be a servant of Jesus." 



ii^ 



ii^ 



176 THE QUEST OF THE FACE IV 

"I don't mean that. Wha' yer going to do 
here?" 

'Do? I've come to find the Light." 

'He's batty. Look here, Turko, wha's yer 
jahb?" 

"In Turkey — farmer." 

"Your ticket's to New York. Do you want to 
book out to the country?" 

"No, I'm going into the city." 

"You won't farm any in New York. How much 
money yer got? He's got four hundred dollars. 
You can go. Next!" 

So Turko was made free of the American strand, 
and was landed at the Battery and driven in a 
rickety horse-cab to the Turkish and Syrian quarter 
on Tenth Avenue, and charged three dollars by the 
Christian cabman. His fellow-countrymen tried to 
put him right about America. They gave him a 
second-hand bowler hat, and made him exchange 
his vast, loose trousers for tight ones that avoided 
the shame of looking home-made. They could not, 
however, give him the corresponding conception of 
American Christianity. The Turk had faith in the 
Baptist missionary, and he had more faith still in 



IV THE LIGHT 177 

the Gospel of St. John. He used to say that since 
St. John had made a Christian of him it must have 
made Christians of thousands of others. He dis- 
believed in the outward semblances of New York. 
At a fashionable Fifth Avenue church they turned 
him out as an undesirable worshipper. His 
friends laughed. "That's the sort of Christians 
they are," said they. 

"They are not Christians at all," said the Turk. 
"If their Lord and Master came to them dressed 
as a carpenter they'd turned Him away just as they 
did me." 

Turko did not mind. He wandered from church 
to church over the vast metropolis, and whenever 
any one questioned him at a church door, he told 
them he was seeking the Light. But he felt there 
were very few Christians about. At a mission- 
hall Sunday school, where a lay preacher gave 
a long address on the feeding of the five thousand, 
pointing out how wonderful it was that five loaves 
and two small fishes could be made to go so far, 
the Turk got up and rather bewildered both pupils 
and teacher by saying that he thought the greatness 
of the miracle lay not in the fact that the loaves and 



178 THE QUEST OF THE FACE IV 

fishes sufficed, but in that five thousand were found 
ready to partake of them. The Gospel of St. John 
was just such a meal of loaves and fishes, but 
where were the five thousand who would eat of it 
and be filled? 

At last, one night, wandering through China- 
town, the gentle Eastern came upon a shop whose 
window was painted black; a little dingy place 
that might one time have been a Jewish cobbler's 
or a little candy store. On the window was printed 
in white letters — 

Have you found the Light? 
Come in. 

He tried the door, but it was locked; he looked 
through a scratch in the glass and saw a row of 
forms and seats in an empty room. What did it 
mean? 

Incurious Chinamen in blue slops and pigtails 
wandered to and fro between their mysterious 
wash-shops, restaurants, and cellars. A vigilant 
policeman stood on the comer. The Turk looked 
round for some one to interrogate, and as he stood 
hesitating whether to go to the policeman or no, 



IV THE LIGHT 179 

a waxen-faced man, lean, out-at-elbows, stooping 
and staring, came staggering past him. 

"Why isn't this open?" asked the Turk. 

The opium-eater stopped. 

"Wha's that?" 

"Why is this place shut? It says 'Come in,' 
and it's shut." 

"Wait a minute," said the opium-eater. "Now 
what is it? Whom do you want? Mary, is it, or 
the old feller? Gone home . . . you find them 
. . . Division Street. Say, you're all ri', I guess; 
take me 'long, take m'arm, G'lumbia Stree', next 
Dave's pool parlour." 

The Turk took his arm. 

"D'you know what I am? I'm what they call a 
dope-fiend. Say, that's a nys name fer a man, 
hey? Say haws, ye know the way, I s'pose. You 
wouldn't think it, but I'm in a God-damn hurry." 

"Why do you say 'God-damn'?" said the Turk. 
"I thought you belonged in there. Haven't you 
ever come there when it was open and gone in?" 

"Wha's that? Stop a minute. . . . Lemme see. 
Yes, that's ri'. You b'long to that bunch; well 
s'do I. I don' remember ye." 



180 THE QUEST OF THE FACE IV 

"What do they give you there?" asked the Turk. 
"You don't smell of whisky, how is it you get like 
this?" 

"Tha's the dope. Hold on. You wan' Mary. 
Tha's ri', isn' it? She lives on Division Street, 
saintly 'ooman." 

At length they reached Columbia Street. 

"Yes, I'm more'n hurry than you'd think. 
Thanks, pardner. Come f'r me to-morrow at 
seven. I'll take ye to Mary. She'll be real 
pleased to see you. I'm in a hurry to get to sleep, 
b'gosh. . . ." 

Next night at seven the Turk called for the 
opium-eater and they went along to Mary's mission- 
room. There the dope-fiend was well known. He 
had been saved there by Mary's father, and though 
he might be a backslider morally, yet he had be- 
come a believer, and had washed in the fountain. 
In the old man's words, he had got a firm grasp of 
eternity and would never let go. 

There were four people in the room besides 
Mary and her father, a drunken street-woman who 
thought she was in the police-station, an ecstatic old 



IV THE LIGHT 181 

man who prayed independently and audibly, shout- 
ing every now and then: 

"Hallelujah! 'tis done! 

I believe on the Son; 

I am saved by the blood of the Crucified One," 

and there were the dope-fiend and Turko. 

There was a sweet little service, and the two 
friends sang a duet together, "Onward, Christian 
Soldiers," Mary accompanying them on the hand- 
organ. The old father prayed for those in that 
room that night, and also, thoughtfully, for all 
those outside. Might they be brought to the Light! 
The light shone in darkness and the darkness com- 
prehended it not. Make the darkness compre- 
hend! The preacher was illiterate, but he was 
simple and gentle. Every evening for years and 
years and years he had kept open his little room in 
the depths of the East Side, and had stood ready 
to help to salvation all who might be tempted in. 
Alas, it was only on the rainy and frosty nights that 
the people of the streets came in in numbers. Still 
the old man used to say that the rain was part of 
God's providence, and every raindrop was an angel. 



182 THE QUEST OF THE FACE IV 

Mary shook hands with the Turk, said she was 
glad to see him, hoped he would come often. She 
shook hands with the poor old dope-fiend also and 
looked tenderly at the two new-found acquaint- 
ances, uniting them together, as it seemed, by a 
smile. And they were really united, and came to- 
gether regularly after that. On rainy and frosty 
days, when the room was full, the dope-fiend and 
the Turk distributed hymn-books among the drunk- 
ards, street-women, tramps, cripples who had 
squirmed into shelter. They held semi-official po- 
sitions. They witnessed with edification the break- 
ing into tears of hardened old sinners moved by 
the tender eloquence of the old father. 

The Turk believed in the mission-room. He saw 
that those who came in became gentler; they left 
behind them their foul language, they were reason- 
able, they sang sweetly, they seldom or never in- 
sulted Mary and the old man. So he was in a way 
satisfied, though there was in him a great feeling 
of dissatisfaction about the world outside. 

His four hundred dollars, which would have 
kept him years in the old country, swiftly disap- 
peared in a city where the price of living is treble 



IV THE LIGHT 183 

that of the unprosperous countries of Europe. He 
was obliged to find a job. He got work on a road, 
repairing the surface. It was scarcely a come- 
down; for he found one of his neighbours in the 
gang was a prince of Roumania, and another was 
the latest descendant of Robert Bruce, one had been 
to college, and another was an ex-clergyman. He 
earned only two dollars a day, but he learned to 
be economical with the money he won by his work, 
and he escaped many frauds and swindles and be- 
gan to live like an American. 

In a pathetic way he came to expect a great deal 
from the American Christmas. He saw the excite- 
ment of all the shop-keepers and thought something 
really unusual was going to happen — a revelation, 
perhaps. On Christmas Eve he and the dope-fiend 
went to Madison Square Garden and saw the im- 
mense Christmas tree set up for all the children 
who had no little Christmas tree of their own at 
home. It was glittering with lamps and hung with 
toys and packets of sweets. A great crowd of 
open-eyed boys and girls were staring at it from the 
railing that enclosed it. On Christmas night the 
toys and sweets were going to be taken down and 



184 THE QUEST OF THE FACE IV 

given to the children, and carols would be sung. 
The children stamped their feet in the snow. It 
was all very wonderful; what did frost and snow 
matter with such a beautiful thing in view? 

From the Christmas tree the dope-fiend and the 
Turk went back to China-town to the mission-room, 
and there they sang with a crowd of women who 
had come in to receive Mary's gifts. A great 
basket full of Christmas puddings was on hand, 
and many a poor old woman felt that Jesus was 
bom that night indeed when she received a plum- 
pudding and a mince-pie from the hands of the 
old man's daughter. 

At midnight the mission-room closed. All the 
puddings and pies were given away, and hundreds 
of folk with outstretched hands were turned away. 

"A bin in your room and sang mos' ev'ry nahit, 
an' you han't give me no pudding," said a negress 
reproachfully. "You cahnt have forgot us," said 
a young Jew, coming for the fifth time. "If Christ 
would only open my eyes!" said a blind man who 
had got in his possession both a pudding and a pie. 
"Cut that out," said a cripple, "you've got your 
teeth in the eats. I haven't got anything, and I 



IV THE LIGHT 185 

guess God won't straighten my back." "You'd 
have to work if He did," said another, "and I 
reckon that wouldn't suit you." 

It was clear the world could not be saved by 
puddings and pies, even were they distributed thrice 
as liberally. 

The dope-fiend and the Turk said good-bye to 
Mary at the door, and she greeted them "A happy 
Christmas!" 

"You don't open this place to-morrow, I sup- 
pose?" asked the Turk. 

"No, we take our one holiday on Christmas 
night." 

"Then it won't be quite so happy for me," said 
Turko pathetically. He had been there every night 
since he found it. 

The opium-eater and he moved away. A 
strange couple they were; the one long, gaunt, 
stooping, disreputable, the other short and fat, 
toddling on his short legs, neatly if poorly dressed, 
and with a simple, contented, but rather pathetic 
look in his square face. 

The East Side of New York was going to sleep. 
Thousands of Christian boys and girls had hung 



186 THE QUEST OF THE FACE IV 

their stockings for Santa Glaus, and even Jew chil- 
dren had gone to bed in the expectation of presents 
in the morning. The streets were emptying and 
becoming darker. Scarcely a shop was open. 
There were no night-stalls and eating-places; even 
the all-night resorts were closed, and the musical 
boxes were silent in those blue palaces where the 
Chinese provide chop-suey and make low-life gay 
in the East Side. It had been snowing in occa- 
sional showers ever since nightfall. In the quiet, 
untrodden culs-de-sac which led down to the Hud- 
son River there was an even coating of an inch of 
snow. And now the flakes came so thickly and 
unabatingly that even populous and filthy Riving- 
ton Street became slowly transfigured. Where the 
stall-keepers, hawkers, and push-cart men had been 
trafficking all day, selling apples and oranges, toys, 
candles, presents, clothes, Christmas groceries, all 
was silent. The barrows were gone with the sellers 
and the customers, and all the refuse of the market 
was being covered over with whiteness. Far 
up in the dingy houses the light of oil-lamps glim- 
mered in the windows. Occasionally a woman 
would come out on the iron fire-escapes fixed to 



IV THE LIGHT 187 

each building and bawl to some one on an upper 
or lower story, or she would bawl across the street 
and would be answered by some one opposite. 
But night and the Christmas snow were gaining a 
great victory. Somewhere far away in Syria it 
was a clear night, the stars . . . one star especially 
was shining, and in a house of poor parents a child 
was bom. Foaming, freshening rivers were flow- 
ing in that country. Wise kings were stalking 
through the night carrying gifts of frankincense 
and myrrh. Yes, it is strange how large this 
world is we call a stage. There is a majesty in 
the diversity of things which are happening upon 
it. Sad that sometimes a city like New York or 
London thinks that it is the world, it alone. Often 
when a man feels wretched it is because he is for- 
getting the immensity and the diversity outside. 

The Turk and the opium-eater turned down Sher- 
iff Street and Stanton Street. All these streets are 
outside the original city of New York. That is 
why they are not numbered. They come before 
First Street and extend to the docks. They are 
the dirtiest and most populous streets in the whole 
world; they close in also more squalor and unhap- 



188 THE QUEST OF THE FACE IV 

piness than any other streets, the dumping and 
huddling ground of bewildered foreign immigrants 
who are oblivious or ignorant of the vast urban and 
agricultural America outside thirsting for labour, 
any labour, even that of the weak hands of the 
decrepit and feeble. 

In Stanton Street, lying in the gutter half snowed 
over, lay a sleeping or dying woman with a baby 
in her shawl, and the dope-fiend and the Turk stood 
in front of her and stared. Snow-flakes were set- 
tling fast on the woman's hair and scarcely dis- 
solving on her pallid cheeks. In her shawl was a 
furrow of snow; the baby seemed lifeless, and in- 
deed it was frozen. 

The dope-fiend leaned down and put an arm 
under her and raised her. She opened her eyes 
and looked at him. As he raised her body her 
head fell back weakly and showed her white throat. 

"Oh, go away, go away," she moaned. "Leave 
me alone, leave me where I am and go away." 

"But if you lie there you'll die." 

"I wan' to die. I wan' to die. I don' wan' to 
live. I haven't anything to live for, and nobody 
wants me," 



IV THE LIGHT 189 

The two brothers of Mary's mission-room stared 
at one another and asked speechless questions. 

"Strange, strange!" said the Turk. "This is 
something that could not possibly happen in my 
country. There each woman belongs to some one 
and is precious. America has Christianity, a 
higher religion than ours, and yet this can happen 
to a woman. I do not understand it." 

"Where d'you live?" asked the opium-eater of 
the woman. 

"Nowhere. If I go home my husband'll kill 
me. But there's nothing to eat there, no job, no 
money, nothing. I've finished. You go along 
and leave me. I'll only get you into trouble. 
Leave me here in the snow. It's quiet. I shall 
fall asleep, the snow will cover me, and to-morrow 
they'll find me and my babe asleep, fast asleep." 

"No, no, that can't be," said the opium-eater, 
"on Christmas Eve too of all nights in the year. 
We'll look after you. Jesus' birthday, think of 
that! You thought of dying. To-night instead 
you'll begin again. You'll start a new life. It'll 
be your birthday too. D'you believe in Jesus?" 

"Have you found the Light?" asked Turko, 



190 THE QUEST OF THE FACE IV 

But the woman they pitifully raised had no 
words to give them. Her face was one unutterable 
ennui. "What shall we do with her?" asked the 
opium-eater. "Let us take her to the Adams Street 
Home. It is a shelter for women; they can't refuse 
her and it's not far." 

The two of them supported the feeble woman 
and took her four or five blocks to the Adams 
Refuge. Let us call it the Adams Refuge; obvi- 
ously one cannot call such institutions by their cor- 
rect name in a story which reflects on their char- 
acter. A remarkably blank and dreary house was 
placarded "Adams Home for Women. House of 
Charity." The windows were all dark, the door- 
step deep in snow proclaimed an absence of visitors 
during many hours. Evidently the daughters of 
Eve did not throng there. 

The Turk rang the bell four times, and then 
continued ringing with his finger on the electric 
button. At last, after the opium-eater had made 
snowballs and thrown them at many windows, a 
woman came out on the fire-escape on the first floor 
and asked them what they wanted. 

"We've found a woman perishing of cold lying 



IV THE LIGHT 191 

in the snow. We thought you would take her in 
here," said the opium-eater. "She has a baby," 
he added thoughtfully. 

"What you say, she has a baby?" asked the 
woman. "Is she married?" 

"Yes, a respectable married woman. Her hus- 
band's out of a job and mad with hunger." 

"But this is only for fallen women. We only 
taken in fallen women here." 

"Yes, she'd fallen," said the simple Turk. "I 
reckon she fall, that's it, she fall in the snow and 
lie there, poor woman with baby, so cold, she so 
hungry, snow so soft, people's hearts so hard, she 
lie and not get up, she want to stay. Fred and I 
come along, respectable men sure, from Mary's 
mission-room. We see the woman and baby lying 
in the snow. No people anywhere, all gone to 
bed. We try lift her up. She say, *No, leave me, 
leave me, let me lie here, I wan' to die.' On 
Christmas Eve when my Master became a little 
baby. I look at her baby and remember Him. 
We're good Christians sure, yes, we don't leave a 
woman to die, any night. Fred remembers Adams 
Refuge and we help her along here." 



192 THE QUEST OF THE FACE IV 

The woman shook her head violently, shivered, 
pulled her shawl round her and prepared to re- 
enter. 

"You've come to the wrong place," said she. 
"We only take cases from the Police Station. 
You'd better take her to the Felix Home for re- 
spectable women in East Broadway. It's against 
the rules to take respectable women in here." 

So saying she cut argument short by disappear- 
ing. 

The poor Turk thought they might take the 
woman to the Police Station and so make her eligi- 
ble for Adams Refuge. But the dope-fiend pointed 
out his mistake. There was nothing to do but 
take her two miles across the city to the Felix Home. 

The woman did not utter a word. They prac- 
tically carried her. They said nothing to one an- 
other, and all the time it snowed and snowed. 
Peace was supreme. They passed no one. Even 
the police had disappeared. The snow came down 
so thick and lights were so few that they missed 
their way for a while among the alleys of the 
Jewish quarter. But they emerged at last on the 



IV THE LIGHT 193 

vast broad East-end highway, the Mile End Road 
of New York. They grew taller by the cones of 
snow on their heels, and by the time they reached 
the so-called Fortunate home they were white from 
head to foot with snowflakes. Well, well! Dark- 
ness again, no open doors nor open arms, no look 
of warmth or welcome. The opium-eater's heart 
sank within him; he knew in advance that another 
refusal was coming. 

They wakened up the porter and he was very 
cross. He came to the door in trousers and shirt, 
rubbed his eyes and stared at them. 

"Wha' yer want?" 

"We've brought a woman who needs shelter." 

"At this hour of the night? Have you brought 
a recommendation?" 

"She's freezing to death," said Turko. 

"No, we brought no recommendation," said the 
opium-eater. "We found her lying asleep in the 
road. Her baby, I'm afraid, is frozen." 

At this point the baby cried feebly. It was not 
dead. The exercise had brought warmth to both 
woman and child, and the little one had revived. 



194 THE QUEST OF THE FACE IV 

"The baby's starving. I can' feed it. I'm 
empty," said the woman supplicatingly. This was 
the first word of hope from her lips. 

The porter rubbed his thigh with his palm, made 
a long mouth and said they'd made a mistake. 
They ought to have taken her to the Home of Char- 
ity or such a place where women on the streets were 
taken in. The Felix Home was only for respect- 
able married women or single females of virtue. 
Sorry to turn them away, but it was their fault com- 
ing to the wrong place. 

"But she's dying," said the Turk. "The baby 
will die." 

"Soon be morning," said the porter nonchal- 
antly, and shut the door. 

"Say, where can we get a recommendation?" 
asked the opium-eater unprofitably. 

No answer. Never mind. At that hour no one 
would get up and write a recommendation v 

"Let's take her down the Bowery," said the 
Turk. "There I have seen you can get a room for 
twenty cents." 

They took her to the Bowery, wakened up a 
lodging-house keeper and hired a room on the 



IV THE LIGHT 195 

ninth story. There was a bed in it, a table and a 
chair. The woman, gasping from climbing the 
stairs, lay down on the bed. It was cold and 
dreary. They spread a quilt over her. Whilst 
they were doing so the door opened and an evil face 
looked in, looked round, grinned and withdrew. 
"This is not a safe place for a woman," said the 
opium-eater. "You sit here and watch her whilst 
I go and waken somebody and buy some milk." 

The dope-fiend disappeared. The woman lay 
unmoving. The baby whimpered now and then. 
Heavy steps sounded on the stairs, there was a 
sound of furniture being moved, and far away 
some one was playing on a viol. The Turk sat 
dreaming. The tiny gas flame, the merest match- 
light it was, scarcely saved the room from dark- 
ness; he could have slept. But he kept saying to 
himself, "The light shineth in darkness, and the 
darkness comprehendeth it not," and he thought of 
the old man's prayer, "Make the darkness com- 
prehend!" and he thought of the two homes and of 
Mary the mother of Jesus and of Mary of the mis- 
sion-room, and of the woman they had found. Her 
name was Mary, no doubt. All such women were 



196 THE QUEST OF THE FACE IV 

named Mary. "Strange thing, this Christianity," 
he said to himself. "Now, in Turkey . . ." 

He was interrupted by the opening of the door 
and the apparition of the tall, gaunt, ragged, stoop- 
ing opium-fiend, carrying in one hand a steaming 
saucepan and in the other an earthenware mug. 
He came in on tiptoe, assuming that the woman 
was asleep, though he intended to waken her any- 
way. He put the saucepan and the mug deliber- 
ately on the table and drew from his pocket a 
chunk of white bread. It perhaps tells something 
of the man when I say he had brought a teaspoon 
also. 

He put the woman up in bed and sat beside her 
with one arm round her, and, with the mug full of 
bread and milk, he fed her with the teaspoon, fed 
her and the poor little baby alternately, and the 
Turk sat watching them. 

When one mugful had been eaten and the opium- 
eater moved to the table to break bread again and 
pour on warm milk the woman looked at him, cried 
out, "God bless you," and collapsed into tears. 

The Turk offered his handkerchief, and the 



IV THE LIGHT 197 

opium-eater wiped her tears away and told her to 
bear up. The baby showed its toothless gums, and 
a faint smile passed over its wee lips. The baby 
was all right; it would live — a strong baby. 

The woman received the second helping. When 
it was finished and the opium-eater turned to make 
up a third mugful he found the Turk kneeling on 
the floor. 

"Wha's that for?" asked he. 

"I am giving thanks to my Master," said the 
Turk, "that we have saved the woman and the 
baby, and that I have found a man who lives ac- 
cording to the Gospel of St. John. I was told there 
were Christians in this country, and though nearly 
all Americans told me there were not, I believed. 
I didn't believe in the Americans, I believed in 
St. John's Gospel. It existed ; it was alive ; it must 
make Christians." 

The dope-fiend administered the third helping, 
and then the woman and her baby lay back and fell 
asleep. The two men sat in silence and watched 
her till morning, till late in the morning. Then the 
woman who had sold the milk and allowed it to be 



198 THE QUEST OF THE FACE IV 

heated on her gas promised to look after the other, 
and the dope-fiend and the Turk made themselves 
responsible for the rent. 

At the New Year the woman was reconciled to 
her husband. He had found a job and was happy 
again and wanted her back to share his happiness. 

The Turk and the opium-eater continued to give 
out hymn-books at Mary's mission-room. They 
were stand-by's of the place. They were sure to be 
there every evening. One evening when the old 
man had a swollen throat they were even given 
charge of the room and conducted the service them- 
selves. Another evening Mary gave the Turk the 
keys and he came early. When she and her father 
came later they were astonished to see the electric 
light being switched off and on as if some one were 
playing with it. When they got in they found the 
Turk placidly and childishly happy turning the 
light button up and down. The dope-fiend was sit- 
ting half asleep in the front seat. 

"Why are you doing that?" asked Mary. 

"It's a miracle," said the Turk, "isn't it?" 

"What is?" 

"Why, the light. You press this and then comes 



IV THE LIGHT 199 

splendid light; we don't have this in Turkey; we 
are only poor Moslems." 

"But that's got nothing to do with religion." 

"It is Christian," said the Turk. "So I love it." 

Mary laughed. 

"You ought to go to classes and learn about it 
and understand," said she. "It is made by water- 
falls." 

The Turk looked puzzled. 

"You go to classes!" said she. "You will learn 
to make it yourself." 

"Oh, I should like to," said the Turk. 

The upshot was that the Eastern saved money 
and went to a science class and mastered the mys- 
teries of electricity. 

He has now returned to Turkey with the electric 
light, an instalment of the light that never was on 
sea or land. 

He will surely return. For the poor old dope- 
fiend has become an infrequent visitor at Mary's 
mission-room. He staggers down the street, 
waxen-faced, delirious-eyed. His soul must be 
calling to the Turk, and the Turk must yearn for 
him, for the gentle heart of the only Christian he 



200 THE QUEST OF THE FACE IV 

found in America, the gaunt, stooping, ragged 
opium-fiend who must forget the evil city some- 
where, either with the Turk and Mary or in a 
Chinese parlour. 



A RUSSIAN BEGGAR 



Unhappy Martha goes in quest of the Face also— from the sor- 
did misery of the starving poor to the spacious places where live 
the rich. To her, Jesus is the one most unlike her present state; 
to her, Jesus is the one who would have mercy. 



A RUSSIAN BEGGAR 

Unhappy Martha! I saw her to-day at the porch 
of a rich church. The church was full of people, 
and the priests in purple robes moved to and fro 
among the ikons, whilst little surpliced boys, white 
as angels, swayed the censers. The rich images, 
deep set in jewels, exhaled strange influences out 
of the gloom. The famous wonder-working Virgin 
looked over her flowers at the grove of wasting can- 
dles around her. Voronof, the merchant, clad in 
furs, held a taper in his well-worn fingers and stood 
before the ikon. Did Mary see him as he placed 
his votive light among those others? He bowed 
to the ground and crossed himself in deep devotion. 
Martha, the beggar, stood outside in the porch 
among others who, like herself, were tattered and 
starved. She was there before the service began, 
and she watched the people going in to pray — the 

rich Moscow matrons in heavy silks, the elegant 

803 



204 THE QUEST OF THE FACE V 

young ladies who tripped daintily up the steps in 
their new goloshes, the young men in high collars 
and smart German ties, the portly business men in 
deep overcoats. She saw these pass by and prayed 
them with unavail. Then in his carriage came 
Voronof, the merchant; the fine black horses knew 
whom they were carrying, and the driver, looking 
impossibly large and important, knew that the one 
who sat behind him was no ordinary man. Slowly, 
and with dignity, the merchant alighted on to the 
pavement and made his way to the church door, 
whilst the beggars, half awed, half desperate, al- 
most barred his way with supplicating hands. 

None of the worshippers had looked at Martha; 
if by chance they glanced at her face, they took 
away their eyes immediately. Martha was not 
pleasant to look upon, she had no nose, her eyes 
looked like the handles of a pair of scissors. 
There were the marks of sin on her face, evil fea- 
tures, lines of hunger and crime and dark abysses 
where horror lurked. The eyes of the worshippers 
going to Mass avoided the defilement of looking 
upon an evil sight. But Voronof, the merchant, 
with his suave, grave eyes looked at her, and, as it 



V A RUSSIAN BEGGAR 205 

were, started. A tremor passed along his lip, but 
he passed, and even he gave nothing; he walked 
straight by every beggar away into the church, and 
not one of them was a farthing the richer. It is 
not a custom to give alms before Mass, but there 
are copecks for many when the worshippers come 
out. Other people followed Voronof, till finally 
the church was full, and the beggars knew by the 
singing and the incense that the service had com- 
menced. 

Martha waited, Martha with her few rags about 
her, not enough to hide her grey breast, her poor, 
grey, withered, outcast breast, itself a rag. She 
stood at the door with the others, stood there with 
a blank mind and lived strange lives under an un- 
moving suspense of rags. 

She had no words. When the people went in, 
her life flame faded low and dull, her brain was 
too starved to yield even thought words. She only 
waited there unmoving, scarce a finger twitching. 
You would have said she was sleeping as an over- 
tired sentry slumbers at his post. But one soul of 
hers was looking through its eyes quietly and with- 
out exertion. One soul, and before it on a grey 



206 THE QUEST OF THE FACE V 

disc it watched two spots that moved together and 
apart fretfully. Martha stood with her shrunk 
body loose in her rags, her poor feet flat on the 
stones, her lips dried together, every word starved 
out of her mind. She looked into herself silently 
at the black spots on the grey disc — will they come 
out, won't they come out? . . . 

Those who were nearest the church door would 
stand best chance. The beggars furtively eyed the 
gendarme at the corner and fought for places. A 
turbulent cripple squirming at Martha's knees shuf- 
fled over her feet, but she did not notice him. She 
watched the grey discs, and now there appeared on 
it little sharp zigzags playing nervously ; then other 
zigzags appeared, opposing ones, fast moving; the 
picture was full of fretfulness. Martha in the 
church porch shut her eyes — devils catch them, 
fiery devils bum them, grind them to powder, 
bum them, strike them down, catch them, — bum 
them. . . . 

Voronof was kneeling at the altar. A priest 
consecrated and broke the holy Bread, another 
priest prepared the wine-cup, in which the Bread 
was put, and the worshippers partook of the sacri- 



V A RUSSIAN BEGGAR 207 

fice which shows us One in Christ. "This is the 
Bread of Life and the Body of Christ, the Wine 
and Blood. Whoso eateth of the Body of Christ 
entereth into His portion and taketh His cross; 
whoso tasteth the Wine drinketh of His cup." The 
choir sang the chorus of the Mass. Then some one 
half -opened the church door. 

There was a whiff of incense and a burst of 
music. Martha started. But it was long before 
the end of the service. She was cold. She would 
have stamped her feet and run about, but she was 
too hungry; if she moved a muscle she would feel 
more hungry. The spots and the zigzags and the 
grey disc had vanished now, and Martha opened 
her eyes. A dreamy film was before her and a 
soul looked into it and listened, listened to the 
ghost of a song — quite a starved little song, and far 
away: 

"Poor Martha 
Unhappy Martha . . ." 

What then? Was she pitying herself? How 
had she come to sing that little song? Over and 
over again, hastily and in thin notes, the little tune 
ran. Now it was full of excitement and then in a 



208 THE QUEST OF THE FACE V 

minute it was slow and melancholy again, first as 
if she were sobbing to herself, then as if she were 
singing a child to sleep, rocking it up and down in 
her arms, and then again madly and frantically in 
breathless repetition. After a moment the excite- 
ment was over, and she was back again listening to 
some one gently crooning. She trembled and 
looked at the door. Over and over again, and 
then faster and faster sounded the song, and then 
shorter, so, "Poor unhappy Martha, poor unhappy 
Martha." Suddenly the other beggars looked at 
her, for she broke into an excited shudder — eugh, 
heugh, heugh, heugh. . . . 

Then all was calm again. She saw a space 
cleared away in her mind; there was a little room 
and a table in it, and she kissed the table. It was 
a little empty table. Martha fell quite flat upon 
it and could not raise herself. . . . Then sud- 
denly she had raised herself, and the table had 
disappeared, and she saw her sister Vera, and 
again the plaintive little song was humming in her 
mind. 

And the song was full of wistfulness and tears, 
she would have wept if she could. But suddenly 



V A RUSSIAN BEGGAR 209 

she saw piled baskets of white bread, baskets, 
baskets. . . . The church door opened, some one 
was coming out; at least the music and the incense 
burst out and the voice of a priest sounded also: 
"And Jesus loved"; the other beggars smartened 
up and rubbed their hands. Martha half awak- 
ened. But at the word "loved" the door closed. 
No one was coming out. 

"Jesus loved!" 

"That Jesus gave away piles of money," said 
ugly Peter, the paralytic. "I wish he would come 
to church, we should all get roubles." 

No one paid any attention, but Martha blinked. 
Jesus, who was he? Was there a man called Jesus? 
Martha saw a face in front of her, suave, grave. 

A policeman was staring at them, one by one, 
as if searching for a criminal. 

"I've seen Jesus," said Martha calmly. 

Ugly Peter grinned. The policeman stared as 
if in doubt whether he ought to arrest any one. 
"One of her customers," said a street arab, smear- 
ing the glass of one of the ikons with his dirty 
coat. "Here, I want you," said the official, pre- 
tending to dive among the tatterdemalions in chase 



210 THE QUEST OF THE FACE V 

of the urchin. A smile and a frown dwelt to- 
gether on the policeman's face, he had forgotten 
Martha. 

"I've seen Jesus," thought Martha to herself, as 
the face of Voronof the merchant hovered before 
her imagination. "I've seen Jesus." Then the 
grey disc again appeared and a lump of stale bread 
whirled about on it; it fell towards Martha, then 
rolled back, came to her, ran away impishly. 
Martha was full of fretfulness and hope — what 
would it be, then, a piece of white bread at Smo- 
lin's, a piece of white bread, a long piece of white 
bread, or would it be only a lump of black bread? 
Lumps of white and black bread danced and 
jumped up and down before her on the disc. In 
a minute they would be coming out. "Lord God, 
be merciful." 

So it happened; the priest pronounced benedic- 
tion and raised the gold cross above the people. 
All bowed and crossed themselves and kissed the 
sign, and thereupon shuffled along the passages of 
exit. The church door opened and the worship- 
pers issued forth, and to right and to left, and 



V A RUSSIAN BEGGAR 211 

according to custom, distributed farthings to God's 
poor collected there. But the crowd of beggars 
without had become almost as numerous as the wor- 
shippers within. Martha moved forward and 
stretched two skinny, yellow hands — two, that she 
might have two chances. Poor Martha, one, two, 
three passed her. She trembled, the zigzags played 
on the grey disc — "catch them, burn them, grind 
them to powder, burn them." But she found 
sounds and words. "For Christ's sake, for Christ's 
sake spare me one farthing, one little copeck, a 
copechka, for Christ's sake, Lord, Lord God, 
a poor sinner begs, a poor old sinner. Bread for 
the love of God, bread for an old sinner?" And 
the wild zigzags still meant, "Bum them, kill them, 
damn, grind, bum." "Be so good, kind lady. 
Remember Christ, remember a sinner. Ah! good 
prince, God bless you, God remember this to you 
on your day." A man in furs was fumbling in 
his pocket. He would evidently find something 
for the old woman; he found a large coin, and put 
it in Martha's hands mumbling a blessing. The 
skinny fingers closed and she looked up. She 



212 THE QUEST OF THE FACE V 

looked up and saw the face, and exclaimed, 
"Jesus!" And Voronof, for it was he, hurried 
across to his carriage and in a few seconds was 
gone. Martha was left standing; she opened her 
hand and saw the coin — it was bright and silver. 
She had never seen the like before, a silver rouble, 
a large and wonderful coin. "Jesus," she said, 
staringly at the delicately engraved portrait of 
Nicholas the Second. She put the coin to her lips, 
felt it all round with her fingers, looked at it, 
gloated over it, and there was joy which found no 
words, only she saw absurd pictures of tables with 
piles of flour upon them. But as the coin lay in 
her palm a red, hairy, hungry hand rushed in and 
snatched and the coin was gone. 

"Rrr! Give me that money, devil, beast, give it 
back, give it back before I tear out your eyes, cross 
eyes, scabby beast, you starved beggar, you beast!" 
Martha tried to get back her money from the grin- 
ning fellow who had stolen it, she threatened, 
pulled, scratched, agonised. . . . 

Then suddenly in her heart the zigzags were 
gone, and she simply saw Vera and her mother, 
and she heard again the ghost of that unhappy 



V A RUSSIAN BEGGAR 213 

song — poor Martha, unhappy Martha. Something 
had broken in her. The beggar struck her in the 
mouth. 

"It was silver money. Give it back," she splut- 
tered. 

"Now then, you diseases, you maggot beds," 
said the gendarme, hurrying up. He pushed the 
thief into the roadway. The latter slunk away 
quietly, and Martha, recognising the dreaded voice 
of the policeman, also passed out humbly. The 
beggar shook his fist and swiftly disappeared. 
Martha was left. 

The afternoon passed fruitlessly. She left the 
tavern at dusk and moved unsteadily along the high 
road. That was the road along which Voronof's 
carriage rolled easily away. It led into the West 
End, to the clean streets and the large white houses. 
The beggars are not allowed up there. 

A handsome equipage came quickly round a cor- 
ner into one of the fashionable squares, black 
horses, a fine driver, and, sitting at his ease, an 
elderly gentleman. It might have been he. Mar- 
tha reeled on the pavement and clutched at a lamp- 
post. The carriage crossed the square and was 



214 THE QUEST OF THE FACE V 

gone. An irate policeman strode over and asked 
what she wanted there. 

"Jesus," she whispered. 

"You won't find Jesus here," said he with a grin, 
and turned her back. 



THE STUDENT 



The face of Him who wipes away the tears from our eyes, the 
Joy of all the afflicted. 



VI 

THE STUDENT 

Imagine the town at night and the horror of it in 
the heart of a man who is seeking a place where he 
may commit suicide. 

Yonder is the steeple clock with fiery face. 
Splendidly and triumphantly that angry face looks 
out over the sleeping town, and would take offence, 
but cannot since it rules alone. Superbly the face 
glares out into the night, and the stonework above 
the clock frowns like dense hair upon a low white 
brow. The town sleeps, but the face looks out 
vigilantly and steadfastly, as if ever-expectant of 
menace. Every quarter-hour the stress becomes 
intense — expectation, in which seems mingled not 
a little pale terror, ranges so high. 

It is fourteen minutes past one; nightmare 

broods upon the city. An eternity of stillness in a 

minute, and then suddenly the danger is past. A 

217 



218 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VI 

quarter past one! The chime outbreaks. Time in 
the tower chuckles to himself in relief, "Ah, so 
there was no danger." The chime ceases: its ex- 
clamation was unremarked, or is felt to have been 
out of place. There is an ominous silence as it 
were behind the tower. The clock looks full of 
anxiety, the face strains every power to hear move- 
ments behind, movement in that sibilant stillness 
so pregnant with mystery. The conspirators are 
manoeuvring, they are discussing almost inaudibly 
who it is shall strike the blow. The face is full 
of anger and dread. Surely it will raise one of 
those long dark arms that hang in dark shadow on 
each side of the tower! Dread, anger, suspense, 
dread, rage, proud rage, indifference but anger, 
dread. . . . Surely the face will suddenly turn 
round and look the other way. Just for a moment 
it will look to assure itself. This cannot last — 
no, and will not. One reflective moment, the face 
clears with comprehension of the mystery. Half 
past one! — ah, so that was what it was — so now 
there is no danger! No doubt of it this time. 
There is no more to be feared from behind. Most 
angrily the eyes flash out far away to the low 



VI THE STUDENT 219 

hills beyond the city. To east and to west they 
look, and clasp the whole town in a vice. The 
eyes narrow with cruelty and the light is sharp and 
keen. No comfort comes from the hills, only the 
morning air a little dank, with its unwelcome mes- 
sage. Time sulks, and will sulk more and more 
till morning now, for as the new work-day com- 
mences, the light will go from his features, and 
men with dull eyes will scan his pale grey morn- 
ing face with its daily sulk upon it. The face 
broods on this, and there comes a moment when 
one expects it to abdicate in disgust, and one fan- 
cies that next moment the fire will go out, and that 
in plain grey garb the shrunken, humble face will 
slowly climb down the tower and disappear. And 
whilst one's fancy contemplates the phantasmal 
vision of an eye-socket looking out evilly and enig- 
matically into the night, one is suddenly startled by 
loud laughter. A quarter to two! Long laughter, 
three times too long; surely a smile would have 
sufficed. One cannot believe in that laughter; that 
is not the final comment on the thoughts of Time. 
Time unpacks his heart with laughter. Time is 
bluffing himself. And not too successfully, for 



220 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VI 

mark with what uneasiness he is now sitting there 
on his shadow throne. But a certain comfort 
comes to him, and all at once he seems to whisper, 
"Am I not Matthew, Mark, Luke, John?" There 
is no answer. So Time also needs to deceive him- 
self and have his little sentimentalism. Thereby 
certainly he gets peace of soul to nerve himself for 
coming duty. One sees it written in the face, 
"Soon it will be two o'clock, let no one breathe, 
let no one disturb me in the discharge of my office." 
Time nerves himself for the effort. He gathers 
strength, then telling forth the whole experience of 
the hour, he gives his verdict and marks off — One, 
Two, 

Time rules and glares in the darkness. Far 
away the dark river water wallows and incessantly 
turns and waves the light-beams which it catches 
from the tower. Heavy river-boats, in dank dulled 
red and green, lie moored at the bank and hobnob 
together. Theirs also is the night, they have stolen 
a solitude for themselves, and even the glaring 
steeple eye overlooks them. They seem to say to 
one another, "He was here to-night." The red and 
green hulks rock sideways to one another. 



VI THE STUDENT 221 

"Who?"— "The student. His eye was dull, his 
legs trembled on the brink . . ." 

Along the towing-path one dim lamp shines in a 
night shop — for whom is that light? On the other 
side of the river the wooden mill-wheel stands inac- 
tive, and but for that the eye finds no rest in looking 
over the water. The wheel is far away and shad- 
owy, but at this moment still seems to reflect on the 
recollection of a grey human form that paused at 
the water's edge and balanced an idea, and seemed 
about to act — the form of a young man whose eye 
wandered over the darkness and found no resting- 
place till it suddenly settled on the wheel. Then 
the idea had been outweighed. 

A pale moon swims out of the clouds and sheds 
peculiar light on the long ripples of the murky 
water. Broad and calm and dirty is the water, 
and the great ooze bed on which it rests is far 
below the surface. There is a smell of fish — plates 
of fish-bones lie unwashed on the coarse tables of 
riverside eating-rooms. The grimy women who 
served the meals now sleep in dark back rooms. 
There is an odour of spirits and stale food. That 
ugly dwindling line of squat dwellings looks like a 



222 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VI 

reptile's tail. There the common people sleep; 
these are the theatres of ill dreams. There by the 
stone steps he, that is, the student, paused angry. 
Grey and calm and deep is the pool below. The 
angry Persian lion's face of the tower is flouted by 
a sooty factory shaft. Softly the ooze washes. 
And within hearing of the ish-ish-ish-wash of the 
water lie huddled together below the coping poor, 
Ugly, tattered sleepers. 

"So they can sleep," he had thought. "They 
can sleep, and they have their share in all the 
comfort of the night. These are the most un- 
happy, and close by the stream they lie. Should 
I prove myself less happy by seeking refuge in the 
stream itself? But am I not forced here?" 

Not far away is that spot, though from the stu- 
dent's window it cannot be seen. His lodging is 
not upon the riverside, but separated from it by 
some rows of squalid dwellings. This is the stu- 
dents' quarter, the place of young men, poorer 
than the poorest of those who lie in riverside slums. 
The eye of the steeple scarcely takes cognisance of 
these dark roofs, so eager it seems to flash in the 
spacious places of the grander city beyond. But 



VI THE STUDENT 223 

below these huddled roofs lie the strong, the young, 
the new. Those high, black houses, subdivided to 
cells, close in room by room all the young learning, 
the wit, the life of which this city will be proud to 
boast in the days to come. Some have rooms to 
themselves, some share single rooms, and in some 
dens three or four lie together among the litter of 
cigarette-ends, volumes on law and medicine and 
philosophy, dust of past ages, whisky-droppings of 
the last students' gathering, old clothes, newspapers, 
picture postcards. Two or three of every four lie 
in twisted heaps and snore plaintively. In body, 
weak through lack of nourishment; in mind, stupid 
through excess of university "cram"; in heart, con- 
fused, tinging their dreams alternately with melan- 
choly and with gaiety, with suspicion and with 
hilarity, with dread and with serenity — they sleep. 
Happy they ! One may be solitary, but for four 
it is impossible. A companion is a buoy that 
keeps one afloat, dancing in the sun upon the sur- 
face of the deep and bitter sea. But what of those 
solitary ones who have nought but work to save 
themselves from themselves, those who by chance 
are without companions, those who for shame and 



224 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VI 

pride and the necessity of their souls may not share 
their dwelling-room with any other? These are 
they who do great things, who toil while others 
sleep, who find and spend the savings of energy 
that lie hidden in themselves — who live on their 
capital. 

The student who paused by the rocking river 
tubs, who thought to find out death in the muddy 
water, but who at last wearily returned to the little 
room he had nearly left for ever, is one of those 
who have, as it were, taken out an annuity for 
themselves. His heritage, all that was passed over 
to him in body, strength, secret strength, soul and 
mind, force and glory of soul and mind, he had, 
as it were, realised and exchanged for an annuity. 
Life had forced him to this. He had been unable 
to find conditions under which he could thrive and 
blossom and live on his annual fruits. That which 
men call life, that is, conditions of modem life 
which were for him also conditions of death, had 
forced him back upon himself. 

So it was that from an ordinary happy boy who 
lived as careless as the bird of the forest, he had 
slowly begun to change to a self -questioning, self- 



VI THE STUDENT 225 

absorbed young man. Boyhood had passed, then 
came the stress of self-responsibility, the taking up 
of a "means of life." To earn a livelihood he 
must needs rise with the hour when the light died 
from the steeple clock, and all day within sight of 
the sulky face he needs must keep mind and soul 
and face fixed in one will. At night, when the 
fiery face glared friskily and impatiently over the 
evening throngs, he would come home and eat and 
talk, and smile a little and then sleep. 

He had become troubled. Because he was not 
at ease, he was bound to think. And because he 
remained constantly in dis-ease, thinking became a 
habit. The more disease ate into his soul, the 
keener and more profound became the thinking 
and the questioning, till folk began to exclaim 
over him, "How clever! Why, what an intellect 
he has!" 

The disintegration of his being forced him to 
seek salvation in all manner of ways, his disease 
took new aspects, new developments. It sent him 
to women and made him the most wonderful of 
lovers, the most melancholy of poets, the cleverest 
of mockers. Vanity was an aggravation of his dis- 



226 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VI 

ease; it flushed across his disordered and bared self 
and stirred all to fever. 

And he sought salvation in books, and his being 
found all books to be the memoirs of people who 
had suffered as himself. Then it seemed that he 
also had experiences, had knowledges that no one 
had written down, and he wished to save the world. 
"Am I not a genius?" he asked of himself. Others 
who knew him were almost ready to call him such. 
The great world in which he earned a livelihood 
became to his mind a great heartless machine that 
used souls like fuel, and used them for no end but 
for the multiplication of cases like his own. All 
around he saw eighths of men who had been bom 
of mothers stronger, richer than themselves. Now 
he discerned nothing that would grow larger. 
Men rubbed together in the press of civilisation 
and, like rocks, wasted one another away to desert 
sand. Sahara dust was the children of rocks as 
the pigmies were the children of men. 

The student gave up the machine, left it as far as 
possible, went apart and resolved to build himself 
whole again — then to rescue whom he could from 



VI THE STUDENT 227 

the great death-system whence he hoped he had 
himself escaped. 

See him now; the gleam of the steeple clock 
strikes across his pale face as he sits in his room 
alone, this last night. Everywhere it is grey and 
dark, scarcely a form is visible except the shadowy 
bulk of the student, and the gleam of his white 
fingers in his thick black hair. Only the tall books 
in serried ranks upon dusty shelves on the wall 
look profound and secret, and deep in consultation 
among themselves. Grey are the walls, and black 
above and below — and darker than elsewhere, there 
on the floor, the student's bed is spread out. 

Great is the unhappiness of all lonely ones; 
fierce the battle of the many against the one, of 
the rule against the exceptions. The rules of 
Progress will not tolerate exceptions. If one be 
an exception, one had better not be an exception 
to a rule. Happy those who lie in the sun of the 
old world, those who have not yet been called in 
for fuel. Unhappy, incurable, remains the part- 
consumed one who escapes. It is better that the 
singed moth die, since it can never fly again. 



228 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VI 

The student sits with cold face in cold hands, 
and the pain of his soul is sometimes thoughts, and 
sometimes thoughts are the pain. Not once has he 
looked out and remarked the brazen stare of the 
steeple clock: it nears three, and the face looks 
sulkier, less sharp, more dream-like. At a 
thought, the young man raises his eyes and sees it. 
A white hand goes forward in the darkness and a 
blind moves softly down. Now darkness itself 
seems curtained. The student sits down once more 
and his head rests in his hands. Pain and thought 
are in harmony, and he is softly moving away from 
the town and his life; he slides softly, easily for- 
ward into sleep, when suddenly, gently, equably, 
almost incredibly the door steals open and a form 
appears. 

The man in the chair does not move, but after 
a moment his head rises and he leans back. 

"Who is it — a friend?" Swiftly, almost hur- 
riedly, the visitor comes across the room, and then 
opens his arms. In full-arm embrace he gathers 
the young man to himself. Then answering in 
movement, the unhappy one comes nearer and 
presses close to the other, nervously. There is a 



VI THE STUDENT 229 

long silence. Then comes a soft whisper: "All 
men suffer; they are all weary. All men need 
sleep, and all need love. A man comes to a man 
with love, and there is no longer any sorrow in all 
the world. Every one is full of secret weariness 
and sorrow which is uncomforted. There is no 
man who would not weep if he could find the bosom 
wherein to shed the tears. The whole world is sad, 
and looks sadly from every eye. The whole world 
is like a woman who for one long cloudy day 
yearns for the kiss of a lover who has turned away 
from her. Every one needs to hear the voice, 
'You are unhappy, you are weary; so are we 
all, but sleep comes, death comes, and love is 
here . . .'" 

Less vigilantly towards the morning the tower- 
face scanned the town; and as the dawn drew up, 
the spite and fire seemed to pass away innocuously. 

In the early morning light the student sat asleep, 
head in hand, at his little table. The light came 
greyly into the room. He wakened, rubbed his 
eyes, started up, and drew the blind. "Evening 
and morning are not alike," he said, and smiled. 
Then a thought came to his lips: 



230 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VI 

Jesu, Lover of my soul, 
Let me to Thy bosom fly. 

"I used not to believe in that, did I? But now," 
... he smiled, "now I go forward as a com- 
forter." 



THE SHADOW 



His habitation will not be found on this world, for he seeketh 
the City, and all his resting-places, even his grave, are but inns 
on the pilgrini's road. 



VII 

THE SHADOW 

"I HAVE determined to give up my work in the 
Office of Ways and Means, and to exchange it for 
a roving life. I am going to take a big jump out 
of all these surroundings and begin to live, get out 
and see Nature and the world, sleep under the open 
sky, write poetry, say my prayers again . . ." 

"I know, I know," said the Hon. Richard Lever- 
last, the head of that particular branch of the De- 
partment where Saxby served. "But I put it to 
you — are you not throwing away the substance for 
the shadow? You have a hundred and fifty a 
year, rising by twenty-five to three hundred pounds, 
is that not so? after which you may be promoted 
on to a higher grade and eventually retire on a 
good pension; there is little to do and the post is 
safe. No one is ever turned out for anything short 
of crime. You are enabled to dress well. Your 
position here gives you a certain standing in soci- 

233 



234 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VH 

ety. The hours are light, you can easily take up 
a hobby such as poetry in your spare time. I dare- 
say many Civil Service poets have written of their 
best in office hours — those hurriedly scribbled 
sheets popped hastily under a blotting-pad or into 
a drawer of the desk when some one else goes by. 
Your post is a good thing and many thousands 
would be glad to get it. You won't get anything 
half as good by leaving us." 

"I shall be free," said Saxby. "This life here 
seems to be a still-bom life. It is a comfortable 
and safe billet, I know, but pardon me if I say that 
I don't fit it, and it doesn't fit me." 

"Well, you know best," replied the Hon. Rich- 
ard Leverlast, feeling that perhaps he had said 
more than good taste would allow, but unable to 
deny himself a parting repetition of phrase. 
"Believe me, you are throwing away the substance 
for the shadow." 

Saxby went out from the great man's presence, 
and he said to himself joyfully, "I have thrown 
away the substance for the shadow. Darling 
shadow! Let that be my motto as I go out into 
the vast untried experienced world. . . . Darling 



VII THE SHADOW 235 

shadow! for whom I would give up any material 
thing that did not seem to fit." 

This was the beginning of Saxby's new life. 
His father before him had died in the service of 
the Office of Ways and Means. He himself had 
been carefully trained for a clerical post there. 
Old Mr. and Mrs. Saxby had asked their boy no 
questions as to what destiny would be his, though 
if they had he would not have been able to give 
them a satisfactory reply. He had never chosen 
anything in his life, all had been carefully planned 
and the plans had been realised. 

But a spiritual passion grew in him and urged 
him out of the safety and comfort of his carefully 
chosen destiny. He wanted to taste danger, wanted 
to take risks, to see life, and to get out of the world 
where everything was arranged. He had a soul 
which yearned naturally for self-expression, and 
the strange thing was that he seemed to have no 
self to express. He tended towards poetry, but 
the verses he wrote were immature, crude. No 
one cared to read them, not even Saxby himself. 
He would keep them a little while and look at them 
wonderingly and lovingly, but at last in distaste 



236 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VH 

tear them up or bum them — as hopelessly inade- 
quate and misrepresentative of his thought and pas- 
sion. Yet one might very fairly have said to him 
in the moment of his disgust: 

"Why do you burn them? The verses are not 
very good, but they do express you. You are not 
Shakespeare, you know." 

Perhaps Saxby himself had some inkling of that, 
for when his poems were burnt he would frequently 
harp back to them and say: 

"You know I wrote some wonderful poems last 
year, but I burnt them. How foolish I was!" 

But he never had any verses to show, anything 
to which to draw attention, and he sent nothing to 
the press in the hope of publication. He did not 
seem to be ambitious, and yet of course he was 
ambitious in a way, if wishing to get a larger life 
were ambition. Hence his revolt against his pre- 
ordained safe post and destiny in life. His ambi- 
tion was spiritual ambition, not material ambition. 
Worldly ambition would have prompted him to re- 
main at the Office of Ways and Means and excel, 
but spiritual ambition against all wise counsel 
drove him out into the wilderness. 



VII THE SHADOW 237 

So he gave up all for what he called the darling 
shadow. And the soft life was exchanged for a 
hard one. He wrote some wonderful poems just 
before he took the final, irretrievable step. His 
decision became a sacred choice, and his breast was 
full of singing birds. 

"I feel as if in me a child were being born," 
said he. "This Christmas is a spiritual birthday 
for me, and I shall always look back to it. Next 
year will be the year One for me." And his 
poetry proclaimed that he had heard the angels 
sing. 

But once he had taken the step he soon found 
himself naked and trembling and solitary and 
friendless. Clothes became shabby, money grew 
less. He looked less important, people in the 
streets gave him less respect — he was clearly less 
respectable. He starved. He was insulted, spat 
upon, kicked. He could write no poems: he was 
plunged in grief. And yet he did not consider 
himself to have been wrong in his choice, never re- 
gretted what he had done. But the meanness of 
the world constantly preyed on his mind. He suf- 
fered greatly. And there was little comfort forth- 



238 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VH 

coming for him from men. "What an orphan I 
am!" said he to himself and smiled. 

His life was still cast in towns, but he escaped. 
When the winter was over there was no restraint 
on him to keep among the settlements and trading- 
places which he had indeed renounced in renounc- 
ing the post in the Office of Ways and Means. And 
he discovered this in the spring and gave a great 
sigh of relief. It takes some time getting out of 
the machine, and often you think you are out when 
you have merely taken a step from that familiar 
portion where you fulfil a part to a less familiar 
portion where you have no part to fulfil. Saxby 
turned to the country, to Nature, and found a freer 
life, and once more singing birds were in his breast. 
He had got from Giant Despair's Castle out away 
on to the Delectable Mountains. 

It would be a long matter to trace the history of 
his self-expression, that is, the progress of his spir- 
itual life. In the presence of the beauty of Na- 
ture — the majestical hills and sunrise, the infinite 
sea — its chorus upon the shore, the lovely verdant 
and blossoming breast of the world, white, wan 
rivers, dark, mysterious forests — ^his first thought 



VII THE SHADOW 239 

was: "How all this expresses me!" He seemed 
to find a kindred. He was nearer akin to Nature 
than to the brick and stone of Downing Street, 
Whitehall, Charing Cross. The society of the stars 
and clouds and flowers and birds was more his 
society than that over which the urbane Leverlast 
presided. It was the society where "none in- 
trudes," which Byron found. 

He began to give praise to God for his escape. 
The poems which he wrote now he did not burn, 
but rather chose to give them an immortality. He 
succeeded as a poet. 

But he did not find rest in his new happiness. 
From learning that Nature expressed him, that it 
was akin to him, he went on to a new spiritual real- 
isation. He felt the sadness of Nature. And after 
that he discerned that Nature was not at all sad in 
itself but supremely, perfectly happy, and only he 
was sad regarding it. The sunshine was vainly 
sweet, and because he was himself eternally sad 
he distinguished in the music of the sea a moan and 
a lament, the note of sadness of which Matthew 
Arnold wrote. He ascribed sadness and an expres- 
sion of plaintive melancholy to the nightingale's 



240 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VII 

song, whereas it was in reality a simple song of 
courtship, and the bird might say to him: 

"Nay, wanderer, nay, be comforted, 
My voice is rife 
To tempt anear a httle wife. 
What is't to thee? 
Alone is night not fair to me." 

And now many of the poems which Saxby had 
given to be printed he would fain have recalled 
and burned. "These earlier poems do not express 
me," he would say. 

Still, for those who could guess his life and his 
passion, they were true poems, and were prized by 
thousands who were striving in various ways to be 
free. 

Saxby was recognised as a poet, and the first 
new money of the world began to flow to him. 
Then Saxby said to himself: 

"Now let me affirm that in tatters and rags as I 
walk these foreign roads, bespattered with mire, 
unshorn, penniless, half-starved, I am yet more 
fittingly clothed, my exterior is more in keeping 
with my soul than it was in the old days of silk 
hat, perfect black dress, white hands, gold watch. 



VII THE SHADOW 241 

and walking-stick. I look a queer figure, but this 
is more nearly me than that other." 

And nevertheless he returned to London. He 
made many mistakes, fell into many errors and 
pitfalls, was lured into many charming ways which 
turned out to be false, but he always escaped. 
He was asked to edit a review, to start a poetry 
shop, to lecture on poetry, to give professional 
readings of contemporary poetry in drawing-rooms ; 
was offered an official post at the British Museum; 
and finally, twenty years after his first renuncia- 
tion, he was privately offered the poet-laureateship. 
All these were baits thrown out by the world to a 
spiritual rebel, and some of them were tempting. 
Saxby was tempted and seemed to fall. But he 
never lay flat. He always started up again, and 
was away before the snarer could put a net over 
him. Large salaries were offered him, salaries 
compared with which the old hundred and fifty ris- 
ing by twenty-five to three hundred pounds seemed 
silly enough, and fees were offered him, but again 
and again he escaped. 

He tried not to attach any importance to money, 
and, as often happens in such cases, money loved 



242 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VH 

him; it sought him out and flowed into his pockets 
in a way in which it seldom comes to those who 
seek it all their lives. 

He lived a simple, undecorated life — as if wait- 
ing for some true raiment and heavenly fittingness. 
It was said that he was humble, and yet I discern 
a superlative noble pride in him. And a great gulf 
separated him from the insipid youth he looked 
when he made his first renunciation. His spiritual 
gain expressed itself in all his movements, and lent 
a true grace to his ways; his face had modified, or 
dull masks had fallen away revealing a strong, 
fearless, expressive countenance. He had the look 
of a man, and might have been pointed to as a fair 
expression of what man really is. He was typical 
of man as he really is, and how far removed is the 
characteristic average man of our age from such a 
type. In the latter sense Shakespeare and Dante 
and Homer and, may we say it, even Jesus, were 
typical. 

A man humble in the world because he was not 
of the world and could not accept a place there, 
but a man of unlimited spiritual claims! 

In later years he loved to travel. He wandered 



VII THE SHADOW 243 

far and wide over the world. I say far and wide, 
but it should be admitted that he did not himself 
consider his joumeyings as far. 

"How far away you've been!" people would say. 

"Oh, don't say /ar," he would reply. "It is 
quite near. The world is a little place. There's 
no far away in it. I can imagine a 'far away,' 
but that's only when I look up at the stars at night 
and think of a beyond." 

But he liked the sensation of travelling; it was 
more congenial to his soul than sitting still. He 
tramped the mountains, went on long river jour- 
neys, ocean journeys in great liners, went up in 
aeroplanes. 

He did not care, however, for the aeroplane, and 
considered it disappointing. He was absolutely 
fearless, and that sense of danger which is like 
champagne to some simply did not exist for him. 
The sad and unsatisfying thing about an aeroplane 
was that it had always to come to earth somewhere, 
it could not go on. 

He liked long train journeys, the sort that can be 
obtained in Russia, Siberia, America, of thousands 
of miles. He never had what may be called a 



244 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VH 

lasting home or abiding-place, and if one of those 
friends who knew him whispered in the midst of a 
dance or asked of another on the way to a place of 
business: "Where do you think old Saxby is 
now?" the answer would be: "Oh, probably wan- 
dering along in some fearfully slow train from 
God-knows-where to anywhere." Others would re- 
mark disdainfully: "There'd be some sense if he 
were likely to find something, if he would bring 
something back from these remote places. As the 
Japanese said when told of all the trouble Shackle- 
ton took to reach the South Pole, 'What does he 
expect to find there?' " 

One of those rare times when Saxby was back 
in London I called on him at his poor rooms. He 
had only been there a fortnight, and yet one of the 
first things he said to me was: 

"You don't know how homesick I feel!" 

"Why," said I, "where do you consider your 
home to be now? Have you settled down some- 
where in a distant land?" 

"No," he replied, "I haven't settled down yet. 
I meant that the 'wander fever' as they call it, is on 
me again. I'd like to be in a train. I am nearest 



Vir THE SHADOW 245 

to being at home when I am in a train, in one of 
those long-distance trains in Eastern Europe, where 
one lives while one travels. Here in England, 
alas, there is always the feeling that a train jour- 
ney is so much time subtracted from life. That is 
why you cut your journeys shorter and shorter 
when rather you should lengthen them out for de- 
light. 

"Directly the train rolls off I feel at home. 
Suppose it is night, and I compose myself to sleep 
and dream. I waken when the train stops, and 
am in torment whilst it waits in a station or before 
a signal, but when it moves again I give a sigh of 
relief, and smuggle up in my sleeping things and 
fall asleep again. So it will be with me on my 
death-bed perhaps. Suddenly I shall feel myself 
moving and be at rest." 

And this characteristic piece of self-expression 
takes me to one of the last errors that crept into 
the life of Saxby, and to tell of his triumph over it. 

As the poet grew older rheumatism attacked his 
joints, and it was considerably less easy for him 
to move about over the face of the globe and remain 
a wanderer to the end. Friends suggested to him 



246 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VH 

that he should try to find a house somewhere in the 
country. He had the money to buy a house if he 
wanted, and one long evening at Saxby's rooms the 
poet and his friends talked and planned a perfect 
home in the country. They allowed themselves to 
dream of the sort of place which in sober earnest 
does not exist on this planet. Saxby was pleased, 
and as ever, when an idea found his heart he was 
extremely enthusiastic and his mind fruitful of 
projects. 

His first thought was of a home in England, so 
that when he died he might be buried in an Eng- 
lish churchyard. He visited a delightful new 
house in a wood on the fringe of Stoke Common — 
decorations by Dupeigne, electric light by Howlett, 
complete in its own grounds, eminently desirable. 
What attracted him were the natural trees and 
bushes and wildness of the wood creeping up to 
the very door. One could have all the doors and 
windows open all day in summer. Its price was 
three thousand pounds, and it would obviously be 
necessary to have several servants to look after it 
for him. Saxby's mind was in labour for some 



VII THE SHADOW 247 

days. But at last with a sigh of relief he decided 
in the negative. 

Then he was recommended to go and see a sim- 
ply perfect cottage on the Sussex Downs. But he 
found it far from perfect. 

He motored to West Hendred to see a seven- 
teenth-century mansion, but when he saw its damp 
old walls he remarked simply, "This is not for 
me." 

He saw five empty houses on the Surrey Hills 
in one day, each one of them advertised vaguely as 
eligible. But not one would do. 

Then he was just too late to obtain a lovely house 
in an orchard near Maidstone. It had been bought 
the day before by a lawyer. "Perhaps it will not 
suit him," said Saxby to the owner. 

"On the contrary," said the latter, "he said that 
it suited him down to the ground." 

"Well, I suppose then it wouldn't have suited me 
after all," said Saxby humbly. 

He scanned the advertisement columns of the 
Times and the estate agents' lists in Country Life, 
He entrusted himself to agents, called in Harrods, 



248 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VH 

made innumerable visits to country places with 
"Orders to View," but with no success. 

"I have shed one illusion," said Saxby to a 
bishop to whom he had applied for knowledge of 
anything specially good in his diocese. "The 
houses which are for sale are not the beautiful 
houses. Of all the places I have been induced to 
visit half could be made into prisons with but little 
alteration." 

"I am afraid you are hard to please," said the 
bishop. 

"Yes, I suppose I am," said Saxby, and rubbed 
his hands cheerfully. 

I really believe he had a certain pleasure in giv- 
ing the verdict of "No" against a house which was 
to let. It filled him with happiness when after long 
and serious consideration he came to the conclusion 
that such and such a place was not for him. 

People came to him and said, "We've found just 
the very thing for you," and the old poet smiled 
incredulously and yet hopefully, and was all agog 
to visit it. He would come to it, would admire the 
thousand-year-old yew tree mentioned in Domes- 
day Book, and the fine beams and the chimney- 



VII THE SHADOW 249 

comer, the old oak-panelled walls, the "old-world" 
garden, the view of the old church, and yet he 
would mysteriously decide against it. 

Or some one would say, "We've found an old 
farmhouse that has some very good points"; and 
he would reply, "I shouldn't take a cottage on 
points, you know, it's something about its 'alto- 
gether' that I am looking for, but still . . ." 

Yes, an unpractical old fellow and yet so lov- 
able, more lovable than ever in his grey hairs. 

He visited castles and abbeys in Yorkshire and 
windmills in East Anglia, river palaces and bunga- 
lows on the Thames and the Severn, picturesquely 
and romantically situated residences galore, and 
did not tire. He went abroad again for a while 
and carried his quest with him, but somehow could 
not tolerate the idea of finding a home in Italy or 
Switzerland or Greece, or in any of those delight- 
ful lands where upon occasion our poets have loved 
to dwell, and he returned home and resumed his 
quest in the old country. 

An expression of pleasure perhaps gives the clue 
both to his life as a whole and to this "cottage- 
hunting mania," as some called it. "You know," 



250 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VH 

said he to a particular friend, "this quest of a suit- 
able abode tickles my fancy immensely — my spir- 
itual fancy, I mean. I love this going about from 
place to place seeking a perfectly suitable home, a 
place that I could with a good conscience buy and 
make my very own. And it is glorious that I can 
again and again say No, It is something like this 
that I have been doing all my life, something like 
this which has impelled me to wander — the seeking 
of a milieu that would fit, this trying to match the 
pattern of the soul which we know in ourselves can- 
not be matched in this world and this life. I 
should be mortified past belief and lie in deep 
dudgeon if one of these beautiful English houses 
were found to suit me and I could buy it and say, 
'This is Saxby's home.' " 

"You would soon leave it and go on, 'Once more 
on your adventure brave and new,' " said the 
friend. 

Which was a true saying, and the old man 
smiled. 

It was not long after this that on one of his long 
journeys he fell ill in the train and was carried 
out and died at a wayside village. 



VII THE SHADOW 251 

Several friends were called to his side, but they 
were too late. The one friend who was accom- 
panying him on the journey read to him at his re- 
quest a chapter of St. John's Gospel. 

The friends, most of whom had tried to find the 
old poet a house, were deeply moved when they 
heard that Saxby had already passed away. A 
newspaper man said, "England has lost her great- 
est poet ; we must look in the sky to-night for a new 
star." A very near friend, also a poet, said, "He 
has got out at last," and a clergyman who was 
present expressed a common thought, "Now he has 
found rest." I picked up the open Gospel and 
read — "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe 
in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house 
are many mansions." 

"He has given up the substance for the shadow," 
said I, looking at the calm and beautiful but empty 
face of the dead, "and we love him the more." 



ALICE 



Beautiful Alice must change, must die, but the beauty is not 
lost; her beauty which passes from her goes on. The face that 
you loved is loved for ever. 



VIII 

ALICE 

She had a calm strong heart. Her spirit's habi- 
tation was secure; no part of it had feh a strain 
during fifty years of royal life. It had borne the 
storms and the silences; bending equably to the 
gales or slackening restfully to the calms, and now 
she felt herself upon the unruffled bosom of an 
infinite peace. In her heart she knew no storm 
could ever rage again, no tumultuous passion could 
ever fuse her being in the glow of joy or grief. 
And in the twilight hour it was to her as if there 
approached her the outstretched wings of a great 
grey bird alighting on the earth, the wings length- 
ening out to take in the East and the West, and it 
was as if the whole earth were clasped to the breast 
of a dove. She shut her eyes and felt herself 
drawn forward, forward into the greyness and the 
silence of the unknown, and of the place where she 
will not know. So it will be with her to the end. 



255 



256 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VHI 

In a kingdom which is within this universe a 
sun shines so brightly that our sun cannot be seen, 
and the very moon there is so bright that it ob- 
scures our moon and stars and light. The eye of 
man looking at that broad day cannot arise any 
lens through which the soul can comprehend. So 
to man that day is night, and the things of that day 
unseen. The sun of that realm dips into this world 
unseen, and unseen in this world, it dips seen into 
its own. It is there that the other children of man 
are living. 



Upon a day years ago, Alice, for so she was then 
called, lay upon a new bed in a brightly furnished 
room in the early morning. Luxuriantly warm, 
with pleasant caressing sheets about her, she lay 
resting her head on the soft flesh of her arm. She 
looked out into the room. Last night had been a 
wild one. To her it had been the one great night 
of her life. For through hours she had mounted 
from pleasure to pleasure, until she dared not think 
for joy. She had lived in the fulness of her life, 
and her beauty had been one, both within and 



VIII ALICE 257 

without and in the eyes of those that beheld. For 
the night had begun in the pleasure of the unex- 
pected, and the glow of new-met friends. And, as 
it were, she had in those earliest moments divined 
a highest orbit for her life. So she began in equa- 
nimity and lived equably through the minutes and 
the hours as towards a great goal. There were 
upon her lips words, a whispered secret, but whence 
she knew not. 

"Only grant my soul may carry high through 
death its cup unspilled." She had conceived a 
thought, but knew not its name. From point to 
point her soul had risen, and her joy became more 
unthinkable, and throughout she had held herself 
as if for an end. In the wild rapture of the dance, 
in the languishment and passion of her song, she 
knew in her heart some great goal. And the man 
she loved had come to her and he was transfigured 
in her eyes. He also saw her in the fulness of her 
beauty. It appeared to her that in all the uni- 
verse there was only herself and this man. Still 
she mounted, and more and more she glowed in 
beauty as her soul fused her being — and then as it 
were she forgot. She forgot the names of the stars 



258 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VHI 

outside, and of the people about her, and of the 
gaiety and the light, and of the man she loved, and 
she forgot the parts of herself. . . . 

The incomprehensible fulness of joy, the flash 
of whose fire blinded her sense, the intolerable 
perfection of her happiness, meant death — one 
death — and then life again, the life burst and 
relief. Dread and pain whispered in her heart. 
She felt abandoned through fire. . . . 

Into sleep. 

Now she had awakened ; and in a strange uncom- 
prehended calm she looked out from her bed at 
the blank door which was a little open. Some 
cords were hanging from a nail in the door, and in 
the twisting of these cords she felt the sense of an 
interrogation mark. The commonest objects in the 
room seemed charged with new meaning. She 
was in a room of mystery, in the web of a laby- 
rinth, as in a chamber of the Pyramids. The 
kaleidoscope of life had turned a phase, and 
grouped the colours in figures with which she was 
unfamiliar. She could not read the writing on 
the wall. The twisting of the cords was a cypher 
in the perfect Sanskrit, that language which has 



VIII ALICE 259 

been written by God upon all visible things as an 
indication of the direction of His purpose. 

She lay in her bed and stared around her as one 
might stare who in his sleep had been transported 
in the night into a strange department. An un- 
named questioning was in her heart. Not only was 
her world created anew, but the centre of that world 
was new. There was new life, new meaning, deep 
at the very core of her being. 

She felt as if she had tossed on a wild ocean, 
but had been lifted by some last wave right beyond 
the storm to some safe inland place. But that 
storm had been herself; she had left herself in that. 
Here she was, new becalmed, half lost, questioning. 
And she knew she could never be again what she 
had been. 

In the grey-blue of a perfect sky of that other 
world is seen a cloud. The soft bosom of an 
unseen body, as faint as a breath in colour, breasts 
the sky of that inner world, and the cloud takes 
form, and the physiognomy of passion. The deep, 
downy, rifted, grey-white cloud breathes into that 
unseen world and a woman's bosom heaves — ^heaves 



260 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VHI 

high and trembles with the breasts flung wide — 
trembles to the breaking-point, dissolves and dis- 
appears. 

And it cannot be known to man how another 
child has been bom to him, how a spirit has de- 
tached itself from a woman in the wild fulness of 
her joy. 

But in this realm the spirit exists; exhaled from 

the breast of a woman, and Alice lives onward 

there in a life where the joy of the new obscures 

the joy of the old, and our midday of joy is a dawn. 

• ■•••« 

One night twenty years later, Alice was again 
in the same room. In her heart was a dull ques- 
tioning and a new-born hope. She looked about 
her with interest, as upon a new world. For again 
she had slept through darkness, and had awak- 
ened to unfamiliar light. By her bed, kneeling in 
sorrow, she had fallen asleep, and now, looking 
around her, she realised a change — a change that 
she construed as mercy and forgiveness. A new- 
bom thankfulness was in her heart, and a joy of 
relief from pain. 

The day had been one of sobbing: she had felt 



VIII ALICE 261 

it to be the very greatest and the hardest of her life. 
For years since the day of her great joy, her hopes 
had been dying. Less and less had she been joy- 
ful, more and more had she been full of grief. 
For months hope after hope had been disappear- 
ing; grief had been reinforcing grief, and day by 
day the last minute had been coming. She had 
prayed God, "Keep this for me; restore that to me; 
what is there left in life? Take not everything 
away from me!" But in her heart had been the 
foreknowledge of complete deprivation. The 
chances were going out of her life. The life that 
is in life was leaving it, and the colours were being 
withdrawn, threatening to leave behind only cold, 
monotonous grey — a twilight world. 

This last day she had fought and struggled and 
fallen helpless in unnameable grief. For it was 
to-day that she had realised completely that the last 
joys in life were finally severed, and that the treas- 
ures she had had in husband and son were lost for 
ever. Restrainedly and in mastery of herself she 
had lived through the earlier hours till the tempta- 
tion of despair overcame her. Kneeling upon the 
ground, she had thrown her head and arms upon 



262 THE QUEST OF THE FACE VHI 

her old bed in perfect agony. There she had ex- 
hausted her thoughts and her hopes. The world 
with its sun and moon and stars moved away from 
her, like canvas scenery across a vast stage. She 
was left kneeling outside in the dark. Light had 
faded from the room, and from outside and from 
within, from time and from memory and from 
sense. She had forgotten . . . and slept. 

Now she was awake and knew herself changed. 
All the passion had fled. A new light was in the 
room and in her memory and in her heart. In her 
eyes everything about her was grey and phantas- 
mal. From the open window, through which the 
moon shone, veiled in clouds, was wafted the sense 
of an interrogation mark. Once again the kaleido- 
scope had turned a phase, and the colours were 
grouped in new figures. In the fireplace the em- 
bers glowed dully among the grey ash, and, as it 
were, mystic figures moved to and fro in strange 
rites there. Life was new. A world lay before 
her new veiled, or a world from which a veil had 
been withdrawn. Or a film had risen from her 
eyes, or a light curtain had rolled down over them. 
For the mercy of God, the woman Alice, as she 



VIII ALICE 263 

was to-day, knelt before a power unnamed in her 
soul in thankfulness. But she will never be again 
what she has been. 

• •■•••• 
And to the darkness of that inner world a spirit 

of grief has escaped, a spirit of grief with our mid- 
night of grief as its twilight, and there lives a new 
child of man exhaled from a woman in her grief. 

In an untenanted house the twilight was reflected 
in the blank windows. All was still, empty, dead. 
There lay in one room the body of a woman. As 
an old inland shore, from which the whole sea had 
long departed, the lifeless body lay. Emptied of 
its last still life by the inbreathing twilight of an- 
other world, there was nothing here remaining that 
any one would call alive. The woman who was 
called Alice had made the course of the whole of 
that space which lies between the two darknesses. 

• •••••• 

In other realms, the unlost life of Man passes 
onward to the undivined. 



MATHILDE 



The face which the artist sees before the rhapsody of creating. 



IX 

MATHILDE 

The gentleness of pure pearls pendent on invisi- 
ble ears. And then celestial eyes looking from an 
invisible face. A heart beating. Unseen hands 
feeling through the air and unseen feet barely 
touching the earth. It is the presence of Mathilde. 
She is all loveliness and spiritual ardour, and a 
mysterious, Ariel-like personality. She goes to 
meet Henri her lover, tigerish Henri, passionate, 
daring, aspiring artist and man, man and animal 
that he is. 

The weather is hot and the air leaves one 
languid. Humid and acrid currents fan the 
nerves, begetting restlessness and desire, and earth 
as it were envies the spirits who move over her 
and sucks them to herself. But celestial and peer- 
less Mathilde is immune from the power of the 

earth, and barely touching it she goes forward to 

267 



268 THE QUEST OF THE FACE IX 

the tryst, Mathilde with her dark eyebrows and 
flashing eyes. 

She is not restless in soul, but thinks imperi- 
ously of her lover and of the idea to which he has 
consecrated his life, of the lost cathedral he will 
rebuild, of the need to save money, to save inter- 
est, to save love to be enabled to build an absolute 
replica of the great but lost cathedral. 

It glimmers over their heads, the great white- 
walled citadel and temple of God, with its mighty 
supports clasping it about and its glory of pinnacle 
and tower, its spires and crosses and its immensity 
of space and height of praise. They hear its music 
even before it has come to be. 

But Henri comes, dark and swarthy Henri with 
eyes and brain aflame, with his long arms and 
beautiful hands, strong body and beautiful head, 
Henri, artist, maker and doer, with head in the 
blue sky and feet firm upon the earth. 

And the loveliness of Mathilde is the loveliness 
of the cathedral, inspiring, enchanting, causing him 
to fall on his knees. 

So the invisible and lovely one stands above 
him, and he, all too visible, kneels at her feet. 



IX MATHILDE 269 

He adores, she inspires. He dreams, she is his 
dream. He dreams more, she is more than his 
dream. He aspires, she receives him into her in- 
visible being. He for a moment almost ceases to 
exist, is hers entirely and for ever. 

And then, and then, because it is only almost, 
because there was a shred of identity left in sepa- 
rateness behind, the change began, the mood al- 
tered and the spell unbound, and a new spell arose, 
this time from the earth. 

Earth rose through the artist to pull Psyche 
down; earth plunged its sense into Henri and 
prompted her desire, and he rose from his knees 
and stood equal with Mathilde. 

His hands grew hot, and his eyes which had 
blazed with light blazed with heat. He desired 
to see and to feel and to know. He put his arms 
about her and made her to have a body. Lips 
found her cheeks and her eyes and her lips. 
Hands gave her shoulders, and side and waist, 
kindred hands, kindred knees, and kindred feet. 
He brought her down to earth and forgot her whom 
he worshipped, forgot cathedral and dream, whilst 
she swooned in the spell. 



270 THE QUEST OF THE FACE IX 

Then Mathilde returned heavily the way she 
came, not thinking, still half-entranced by the spell 
of the earth. But a shame began to grow on her 
and she looked sadly on her opaque white hands 
which had lately been translucent. She unbent her 
lips whose shape her lover had seemingly been try- 
ing to change. She came to her chamber and knew 
her body moist and heavy after the embrace, knew 
herself tired, knew that the day had been hot. 
And she bathed and perfumed herself, put on 
new linen, read a beautiful poem. But still she 
was not as before. Her pearls hang from most 
dainty but visible ears. Her dark eyes, now 
filmed, are set in the loveliness of a pale human 
face. Her neck rises poised between her shoul- 
ders. She has grace and bearing and womanhood. 
She is not as before. 

But then night comes and she sleeps, and in her 
sleep casts off the spell of earth. Next day once 
more she is as before. Lovely invisible Mathilde. 

And then the tryst once more. 

And the spell once more. 

And evening once more. 

And sleep once more. 



IX MATHILDE 271 

And once more the gentleness of soft pearls 
pendent on invisible ears. 

And with Henri the cathedral dream is the celel- 
tial loveliness of her face. 



SERAPION THE SINDONITE 



Wonderful Serapion, the antique hermity did not desire to be 
thought a man; he was content to be a limb. For the service 
of Christ he sold himself to be a slave, and he said reproachfully 
to the crowd that was ready to spit on a slave, "I am yours, I am 
not mine." In spitting on him they were spitting on a limb of 
themselves, spitting in humanity^s face and the face of the Crea- 
tor, though they did not know. Serapion found Christ in this 
way, that he made himself one with Him, a part of Him. 



SERAPION THE SINDONITE 

His idea of service was to sell himself to be a 
slave so that he might win his master or mistress 
to Christ. He was called the Sindonite because 
he wore but a swathing of linen, and that was his 
only garment, being clothed otherwise sufficiently 
in the love of God. His body he called his cell 
in which his soul was always kneeling. 

Serapion was an Egyptian, that is a Copt, not 
an Arab, and he lived in that era of faith when the 
deserts of Nitria and Scete and the Sahara were 
more populated by hermits and holy men than the 
great cities of Alexandria or Jerusalem. In his 
day thousands of votive men and women had the 
impulse to go out from the striving and secular 
cities of the empire of Rome and endeavour to be- 
come part here and now of the Kingdom of God. 
And among them came the young Copt Serapion 

with the glory of Christ in his eyes, full of grace 

276 



276 THE QUEST OF THE FACE X 

and truth, to live in the desert with God, commun- 
ing with the Word of the Scriptures. He was 
clothed in one piece of linen and in his own spirit- 
ual radiance, and he knelt humbly before God, and 
humbly and yet joyfully read the Book of Books. 

There were about him in the desert hermits 
whose denial of the world expressed itself in vari- 
ous ways; some who had scooped holes in the sand, 
some living in the tombs and ruins of old Egypt; 
others in monastery buildings, others again with- 
out any shelter whatsoever; some humbly pious, 
some fanatical and hysterical, some loving and 
gentle, some bitter and severe. There were un- 
doubtedly both evil and ambitious men as well as 
humble and holy men of God, and if the many 
did cause the desert to blossom with spiritual blos- 
soms, there were those also whose presence was 
searing and mortifying even to miraculous flowers. 

On the right and on the left were disputatious 
hermits, destined to be depicted with halos after 
their death, yet often dwelling in the darkness of 
pride and ambition in their lives. They averred 
they had come to save their own souls, knew they 
had saved them by their act of renunciation, and 



X SERAPION THE SINDONITE 277 

now only sought a greater and greater glory in 
God's eyes by out-doing one another in spiritual 
feats, in singing and praying against one another 
and mortifying the flesh. 

They attracted great crowds of pilgrims and 
religious sightseers, but Serapion none knew, 
neither did he know them, and he dwelt in a sweet 
morning solitude wherein nothing was evil and all 
was innocent and full of grace. Yet there was 
care in the desert for him, he was troubled in heart 
at the recollection of the unhappy world he had 
left behind, but as like goes to like, so the holy and 
the true mysteriously learned of him and knew of 
him. And there were wiser than he to whom he 
could submit for advice. They for their part 
knew that Serapion was near to God and directly 
in touch with his Lord. 

So when the message came to Serapion to for- 
sake the desert they did not say him nay. From 
the living Gospel he learned that God would love 
him to go back to the world which in many ways 
was more dead and barren than the desert itself, go 
back to the world and be servant of all, for the 
Word's sake. 



278 THE QUEST OF THE FACE X 

God thus chose him and marked him out among 
his fellow-hermits, and he left the wise and the 
holy, left also the emulous, and went back to the 
world, whence he had come, to be servant of all. 

He went up to Alexandria and sailed on the sea 
to Greece, of which he had heard as being in as 
great need of spiritual life as in St. Paul's day. 
He came to the gay city of Corinth, and his heart 
being first touched by a showman and his wife, 
living in sordid ignorance of Christ, he went to 
them and sold himself to be their slave. The 
twenty pieces of silver which he received in ex- 
change for his freedom he put away in a crevice 
in a rock. For in common with other hermits he 
did not acknowledge that money had power and 
he knew that his payments and receipts must be 
rather in God's currency, the coinage of the King- 
dom of Heaven. The home of the showman was 
a centre of sin, and much happened there that 
Serapion did not understand. But he fulfilled ev- 
ery duty laid upon him, even the most menial and 
least worthy that a man should do; and whenever 
anything went wrong in the house Serapion took 
the fault upon himself and never complained. He 



X SERAPION THE SINDONITE 279 

took upon himself all manner of fault that the 
showman and the showman's wife knew to be their 
own. They for their part learned greatly to re- 
spect their tireless servant but did not understand 
his humility, till one day Serapion explained. 

A fire had broken out in a room in the house of 
the showman, brought about one night after a suc- 
cessful performance through the incaution of friv- 
olous visitors. 

Said Serapion, "I pray God's love and care for 
you, and for me that I may be vigilant. But I did 
not pray fervently enough, therefore the fire came 
to you. Alas, I am weak and sinful." 

Such explanation won the admiration and love 
of these two Greeks and made them think of God 
and Christ. They became aware of the great 
blessing they had in their wonderful slave. For in- 
deed even in a material way Serapion seemed to 
have brought fortune. And as they watched him 
they were won by his bright spiritual personality 
and resolved one day to become Christian and give 
up their meaningless Greek gods. 

Then they said to Serapion, "Thou hast re- 
deemed us. Let us, we pray, redeem thee." And 



280 THE QUEST OF THE FACE X 

they brought to him his token of slavery and gave 
it him back. Then, holding hands together, as 
freemen and equals they knelt and prayed aloud. 
Serapion led them in the Lord's Prayer, phrase by 
phrase, and called for God's blessing. That done, 
he hastened and fetched the money that had been 
paid him for himself, the twenty pieces of silver, 
and gave them back to his master and mistress, 
though they besought him with tears that he would 
keep it still for their sake. But Serapion ex- 
plained that he had renounced the world and, be- 
longing now to God's Kingdom, could not use 
money which was currency of Caesar. So, much 
marvelling, though inwardly at peace, the new-bom 
Christians watched their slave Serapion go on his 
way, clothed as he was so meagrely in his bit of 
linen, but with the light of God around him. 

Serapion's heart was next touched by a rich 
man to whom for the same blessed cause he sold 
himself, and he did so well that in two years the 
whole household was brought to the faith. Liber- 
ating him, his master gave him a coat and a cloak 
and the Gospel, and Serapion, well-clad, journeyed 
northward in the winter. But he soon gave away 



X SERAPION THE SINDONITE 281 

coat and cloak to the cold and ragged whom he met 
on the way, and he journeyed on as he had done 
before, the Sindonite, but with the holy Gospel in 
his hands. 

In Athens Serapion starved for want of bread, 
and there a Stoic who had observed his pitiful 
state endeavoured to put a Christian to the test. 
After Serapion had been three days without food 
the Stoic came to him and offered to buy the 
Gospel from him for money to buy bread. Sera- 
pion refused, and the fourth and the fifth day the 
Stoic repeated his attempt, but the Coptic hermit 
bowed humbly, repeating ever, "Man shall not live 
by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth 
out of the mouth of God." This so moved the 
Stoic that life began to stir in the dry heart of the 
philosopher, and having from his heart and out 
of his love given the hermit bread, he knelt beside 
him and read from the Book and was saved. 

By these and many like divine adventures 
Serapion fulfilled his spiritual mission in Greece, 
and in course of time was moved to go to Rome. 
And wherever he went he was upborne by the 
Spirit, and whatever he wished, though fellow- 



282 THE QUEST OF THE FACE X 

man said it was impossible, yet for him through 
grace it became possible. Then he sailed on the 
sea and was cared for by the ship's company though 
he never had a farthing to pay his passage. And 
he was fed though he had no money to buy food. 
Indeed when it was proposed by the captain that 
the stowaway hermit be put down at the nearest 
port the superstitious sailors would not hear of it. 
But indeed Serapion earned his passage on that 
ship, for through his serviceableness he did as much 
menial and necessary work as three extra sailors 
would have done. 

In Rome he served two long periods of slavery 
in which he was transferred to others and con- 
stantly mingled and intermingled with suffering 
souls in the great and wicked world. He wore 
humanity's yoke and said to the crowd that some- 
times spat upon a slave, "I am yours, I am not 
mine; I am flesh of your flesh, spirit of your spirit; 
poor Serapion is not a man, he is happy to be a 
limb." 

And scholars and critics sat at high windows and 
looked over the wicked city and despaired, not 
knowing of the leaven working in it, ever humbly 



X SERAPION THE SINDONITE 283 

and untiringly working, not knowing that spirit of 
humanity's spirit was Serapion, the beautiful spirit- 
ual being, wilfully selling itself to the slavery of 
the flesh for the greatest of spiritual ends. 

So passed the life of Serapion the Sindonite. 
But when old age came upon him the Spirit 
prompted once more: "Go now to Egypt again; 
leave Rome in which thou hast laboured for a while 
and seek the spiritual peace of Egypt." And he 
returned to his desert and his humble praying 
place on the left and on the right of which the dis- 
putatious hermits still wrangled for glory. In 
course of time they died and so did he. But it 
is said that greater miracles were wrought where 
his body lay than at the mighty ecclesiastical 
shrines near-by. 



SIMON ON THE PILLAR 



''And I if I be lifted up . . . will draw all men unto me." 
Heroic Simon made his Imitatio Christi, affirming by his symbolic 
posture that man was above the earth. Christ raised the ideal 
level of humanity, giving witness to the Divine in man. All look 
towards Christ on the Cross, for from its four corners He raises 
us up to Himself and supports us. All looked toward Simon 
who made his life a candle before the ideal. 



XI 

SIMON ON THE PILLAR 

Simon was a wonder of the world. In him all 
hermits gained fame, and humanity itself was 
raised. By God's grace he was chosen to be a 
candle to men and tribes and nations. He was a 
living and continuing miracle, a new marvel of 
young Christianity, a fixed and steady star in the 
East. 

Simon's service was an affirmation of the Divine 
in man. The known world of men in those days 
was sunk in vice and sensual luxury. Men by 
their ordinary lives proclaimed themselves to be 
little better than animals. The slaves were like 
jaded horses and mules, the free townsmen were 
like goats or monkeys, the barbarians like tigers, 
the sorcerers like serpents, the wise men like ele- 
phants. But Simon and many brothers of the 
spirit proclaimed the great counter-cry of Chris- 
tianity — Ye are parts of God, members of Christ, 

287 



288 THE QUEST OF THE FACE XI 

ye men, not beasts of the forest and the field. 
And the beautiful Simon with the light of God in 
his eyes, the living word on his lips, stood on his 
pillar in Syria like God's candle in the East. 

He was moved as a boy in the same way as 
Serapion, and yearned to deny the flesh and the 
world everlastingly in his body and his life. He 
was bom in Cilicia, in the village of Cis, in 
the year 388, of Christian parents, and was bap- 
tized, and became with years a gentle shepherd 
boy who said his prayers in the field. And he 
used to collect sweet gum and resin and bum it so 
he might see the smoke go up to God, the way his 
thoughts yearned also from his burning heart. He 
found communion with God, and God in turn gave 
him dreams and visions, and prompted his young 
heart. Simon was prompted and then God con- 
firmed. 

Whilst his companions of the field ate and drank 
and made merry, the young Simon fasted and ex- 
pected visions. Whilst they were together he went 
apart, and his eyes were strained to see something 
they did not see, his ears were set to catch a note of 
heavenly music which they did not sing. He went 



XI SIMON ON THE PILLAR 289 

up into the mountains and into the chapels and 
prayed, and whilst all others in Cis slept he knelt 
in the church at midnight and was told silently of 
things to be. 

Anon Simon's father died and half of a rich 
estate became his. But he called in all the poor 
far and near and made a feast for them, and 
divided among them all his corn and his gold, and 
having done so took up the Gross to follow the 
Master. He set off upon the road that led to 
Antioch and beyond — his life-road of service. 
And on the way he came to the monastery of 
Teleda, where a kinsman had lived thirty-five 
years in a cell. The abbot took Simon in though 
he was but fifteen, and thus so young he began to 
carry out the hard rule by which the monks and 
anchorites denied this life, this world, in the name 
of that life, that world. Simon received Holy 
Communion daily, and, except on Sundays, re- 
ceived no other food, so it may be said he was sup- 
ported even physically by the Living Bread which 
came down from heaven. 

And from his body there fell away that coarser 
flesh and substance which is made by the ordinary 



290 THE QUEST OF THE FACE XI 

bread on which the animal in us is nourished. 
And new cells, formed to be the web of his soul, 
were given him from the living body and blood of 
our Lord. 

So much did he change and stand out in con- 
trast that the other monks in the monastery could 
not but notice him, and there were some who were 
consumed with jealousy — good men in themselves, 
but not possessed of the fitness of Simon. The 
angry brothers did not see how Simon glorified the 
brotherhood and themselves by his fairness and 
spiritual beauty. They would have attracted 
God's notice to themselves, and were angry as 
Cain was at Abel's more acceptable sacrifice. 
They went unto Heliodorus, their abbot, and clam- 
oured against Simon, and had they been men of 
the Old Testament rather than of the New, they had 
certainly slain their brother. But the Christ that 
died to make us one restrained them thus far. 
Nevertheless Simon was forced to leave Teleda, and 
the good man Heliodorus was forced to part with 
the pearl of great price. 

And Simon at twenty-four years came to the 
monastery of Telnesche near Antioch, and was joy- 



XI SIMON ON THE PILLAR 291 

fully received beyond its walls. There he became 
a complete recluse for the first period of Lent; 
he knelt in a small cell with a Cross and a book 
and a basket of bread and a pitcher of water, and 
the cell was walled up till Easter mom, when the 
brothers broke down the wall anxiously and ex- 
citedly, fearing he might have died. And they 
found the fair young man like the shining One in 
the sepulchre greeting them with the knowledge 
that Christ had risen indeed. Simon received 
Communion then, and the loaves and the water 
which had been put in the cell were found to have 
been untouched. 

Then they built for their anchorite a mandra, a 
circle of desert sand with a wall built around it. 
And he was obscured from his fellow-men, but 
exposed to wind and weather from above, and 
heat and cold. But he knelt and prayed, and those 
who passed by the wall knew that though nought 
was seen, a holy man continually watched within. 

The thought had come to Simon when he was 
walled up in the monastery wall: I am just one 
brick of the Church, a living brick. So must we 
all be at last, living bricks in the walls of the heav- 



292 THE QUEST OF THE FACE XI 

enly Jerusalem. And when he was promoted from 
the closed cell to the mandra he felt he was one 
stage nearer the great true life of faith when no 
walls whatever would be needed. 

And indeed if saints can walk in this world in 
heavenly bodies, Simon was coming to that guise. 
All earthly and animal dross had departed from 
him. He approached the pure gold of which 
Jerusalem's streets are paved. His empyreal sub- 
stance was manifest. 

"Thou art part of the City," a voice whispered 
to Simon, "thou art part of Sophia and of the 
Bride. Thou art humanity's candle, thou art part 
of the light of men." 

Round about the walls of the mandra were many 
seekers and pilgrims, for the spiritual fame of 
Simon was already great in Syria. And as Simon 
thought and knew he was part of the City of God 
of which all must in time become living bricks each 
in his place, he was moved to manifest himself to 
the throngs without, and he arose on to a pillar 
which was in the centre of the mandra till he was 
just seen. Then he built the pillar higher and 
grew upon it higher and higher, built it still more 



XI SIMON ON THE PILLAR 293 

high with help, and as he rose and knelt upon it 
it grew higher stilL And the city which was set on 
the hill could not be hid, neither could the light 
mounted on the candlestick of Simon's high 
column. 

On a column 90 feet high and 3 feet in breadth 
he lived thirty years and prayed and preached and 
prophesied, and never came down, neither in storm 
nor in cold, night nor day. At first it seemed so 
narrow a platform he was constantly in danger of 
falling, but in course of time he got as used to it 
as a landowner might become to a large estate or a 
traveller to the world, and he could have halved 
the standing-ground and still felt free. And he 
could sleep as he stood. He could bow from his 
head to his feet without bending his knees, and a 
disciple once counted one thousand two hundred 
and forty-four adorations of this kind and then 
grew tired of counting, though marvellous Simon 
did not grow tired. 

The example and the figure of the hermit on the 
column moved humanity greatly, and many were 
the men and women who turned from the world and 
sought to affirm the Spirit and the Kingdom in mon- 



294 THE QUEST OF THE FACE XI 

astery cell and desert cave. The fame of Simon 
spread to new countries and climes, and the white 
pillar on which he stood seemed to continue to rise, 
to rise and to rise like the pale morning light, till 
the face of the beautiful hermit looked over the 
dark sea, over snowy mountain ranges, over vast 
plains, and rivers and towns and cities. And at 
one moment all humanity looked to him and up to 
him. 

And throngs of people of all nationalities came 
to the mandra walls and learned from the lips of 
the great living statue the new words of Christ, 
and they knew that the time was changed and could 
never be again what it had been. The supersti- 
tions and idolatries and despairs and ignorances of 
the night trembled and shook as morning breezes 
and light beams came over them. 

A certain Greek came to Simon and called up to 
him, "0 marvellous Angel, thou art not a man, 
thou art a God who hast come down to us from 
heaven and hast alighted on this pillar." 

"Ah, no," cried Simon, "I am but one of you, a 
man. I have not come down, I have risen up to 
this height." 



XI SIMON ON THE PILLAR 295 

The Greek would have written on the column 
"Ecce Deus," but of Simon as of Christ it might 
most fitly be said, "Ecce Homo — Behold the Man." 

Before Simon's day and after men were proud of 
the fiercenesses or sagacity of the animal in them- 
selves. But Simon in himself raised the ideal 
level of humanity, and many a man and woman 
looking to him saw themselves as they wished they 
were — that is, as they really were. 

There are an infinite number of stories and 
legends of the pilgrim men and women and whole 
tribes of the east and the south that came to Simon 
to see, hear, or be blessed. One of the most beau- 
tiful is that shortly before the holy man's death 
Christ Himself alighted on the pillar and the saint 
went up to heaven. 

Simon fell into the coma of death and for three 
days neither spoke nor moved nor gave token of 
life. His disciple Antony watched at his side, and 
on the third day was aware of sweet odours rising 
from the body and a procession of light as it were 
a spirit moving. The mandra down below was 
plunged in gloom and the sound of the wailing of 
the pilgrims floated upward. For Simon's silence 



296 THE QUEST OF THE FACE XI 

was so unwonted. So greatly the people yearned 
to hear the voice of the hermit again that life was 
fain to return. A gracious figure stood erect once 
more on the column, bowed to east and to west, to 
north and to south, and then gave blessing, "0 bless 
ye my children, bless ye, my poor children." And 
humanity in the vague morning light heard him, 
and as the figure melted backward away from them 
again, all rocked together in the music of a psalm. 

So Simon died, and we remember and acknowl- 
edge that he rose on his pillar that we might have 
light, even as Christ was lifted up that we might 
have life. Christian knights and warriors rode 
over Europe compelling Christianity on tribes and 
nations, but behind them was the light of Simon 
and Serapion and many another holy and heroic 
brother of the East. 

The light which they announced by their lives 
was the light of the divine in man, it was the tid- 
ings of a higher destiny for us all — that we should 
not perish like the beasts of the field, but be one 
with God and in God through love. Love is the 



XI SIMON ON THE PILLAR 297 

clue to our destiny. And as Love is discovered 
almighty, almighty be proved 

Thy power that exists with and for it, of being beloved ! 
He who did most shall bear most; the strongest shall 

stand the most weak. 
'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that 

I seek 
In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. Saul, it shall be 
A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me 
Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand like 

this hand 
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the 

Christ stand! 



THE END 



PRINTED IN THE UNITBD STATES OV AMERICA 



T 



HE following pages contain advertisements of 
Macmillan books by the same author. 



Priest of the Ideal 

Cloth, i2mo, $i.6o 

Mr. Graham here employs his vast knowledge of Russian 
life in the writing of a novel. Hitherto he has devoted him- 
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In this, his first novel, there is presented in the person of 
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he suggests in many ways the old, fascinating Mystery Play. 
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book and is handled with great power. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

publisher? 64r-66 Fifth Avenue New Toyk 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

The Way of Martha 
and the Way of Mary 

Colored frontispiece, i2mo, $2.25 

Stephen Graham is a close student of Russia; he has a con- 
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

Russia in 1916 

Frontispiece, i2mo, $1.25 

"Impressionistic pen-pictures which aptly reflect the mood 
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

Through Russian Central Asia 

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Decorated cloth, illustrated, 8vo, $2.75 

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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

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Cloth, illustrated, 8vo, $1.75 

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with men, a keen observer and a skillful adept with the pen."— 
North American. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

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